without being reconciled by penance or admitted to the holy communion;
souls are sent pell-mell before the awful tribunal of God; the grace of
baptism is refused to little children; those to whom the Lord said,
'Suffer little children to come unto Me,' do not obtain the means of
coming to salvation. Is it because of a belief that these little
children have no need of the Saviour, inasmuch as they are little? Is it
then for nought that our Lord from being great became little? What say
I? Is it then for nought that He was scourged and spat upon, crucified
and dead?" St. Bernard preached with great success in Toulouse itself,
but he was not satisfied with easy successes. He had come to fight the
heretics; and he went to look for them where he was told he would find
them numerous and powerful. "He repaired," says a contemporary
chronicler, "to the castle of Vertfeuil (or Verfeil, in the district of
Toulouse), where flourished at that time the scions of a numerous
nobility and of a multitude of people, thinking that, if he could
extinguish heretical perversity in this place where it was so very much
spread, it would be easy for him to make head against it elsewhere. When
he had begun preaching, in the church, against those who were of most
consideration in the place, they went out, and the people followed them;
but the holy man, going out after them, gave utterance to the word of God
in the public streets. The nobles then hid themselves on all sides in
their houses; and as for him, he continued to preach to the common people
who came about him. Whereupon, the others making uproar and knocking
upon the doors, so that the crowd could not hear his voice, he then,
having shaken off the dust from his feet as a testimony against them,
departed from their midst, and, looking on the town, cursed it, saying,
'Vertfeuil, God wither thee!' Now there were, at that time, in the
castle, a hundred knights abiding, having arms, banners, and horses, and
keeping themselves at their own expense, not at the expense of other."