able to speak, I felt a sudden impulse to cry out at the top of my
voice.

What a treasure! For more than forty years I had been making a
special study of the history of Christian Gaul, and particularly of
that glorious Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, whence issued forth
those King-Monks who founded our national dynasty. Now, despite the
culpable insufficiency of the description given, it was evident to
me that the MS. of the Clerk Alexander must have come from the great
Abbey. Everything proved this fact. All the legends added by the
translator related to the pious foundation of the Abbey by King
Childebert. Then the legend of Saint-Droctoveus was particularly
significant; being the legend of the first abbot of my dear Abbey.
The poem in French verse on the burial of Saint-Germain led me
actually into the nave of that venerable basilica which was the
umbilicus of Christian Gaul.

The "Golden Legend" is in itself a vast and gracious work. Jacques
de Voragine, Definitor of the Order of Saint-Dominic, and Archbishop
of Genoa, collected in the thirteenth century the various legends of
Catholic saints, and formed so rich a compilation that from all the
monasteries and castles of the time there arouse the cry: "This is
the 'Golden Legend.'" The "Legende Doree" was especially opulent in
Roman hagiography. Edited by an Italian monk, it reveals its best
merits in the treatment of matters relating to the terrestrial
domains of Saint Peter. Voragine can only perceive the greater
saints of the Occident as through a cold mist. For this reason the
Aquitanian and Saxon translators of the good legend-writer were
careful to add to his recital the lives of their own national saints.