"The blessed Mezzocanes, Abbot of Aquila, wished to be buried under a gallows, and it was done."
"Saint Terentius, Bishop of Oporto, at the mouth of the Tiber on the sea, ordered that there should be engraved on his tombstone the symbol which was placed on the grave of parricides, in the hope that passers-by would spit on his tomb; and it was done, for the dead ought to be obeyed."
"The body of Bernard Guidonis, who was born in France, near Roche Abeille, was, as he ordered, and in defiance of the King of Castile, conveyed to the Church of the Dominicans of Limoges, although Bernard Guidonis was Bishop of Tuy in Spain. Can you say the contrary?"
"The fact is attested by Plantavit de la Fosse."
A few beads were told in silence, and then the prioress resumed,--
"Father Fauvent, Mother Crucifixion will be buried in the coffin in which she has slept for twenty years."
"Then I shall have to nail her up in that coffin?"
"And we shall not employ the undertaker's coffin?"
"I am at the orders of the most Reverend Community."
"The four singing mothers will help you."
"To nail up the coffin? I do not want them."
"You will lift the stone by passing the bar through the ring."
"We must obey the dead. It was the last wish of Mother Crucifixion to be buried in the vault under the chapel altar, not to be placed in profane soil, and to remain when dead at the place where she had prayed when alive. She asked this of us, indeed, ordered it."
"The Chapter is assembled; the vocal mothers, whom I have just consulted once again, and who are deliberating, have decided that Mother Crucifixion should be interred according to her wish, under our altar. Only think. Father Fauvent, if miracles were to take place here! What a glory in God for the community! Miracles issue from tombs."
"But, Reverend Mother, supposing the Sanitary Commissioner--"
"Saint Benedict II., in a matter of burial, resisted Constantine Pogonatus."
"Chonodemairus, one of the seven German kings who entered Gaul during the empire of Constantius, expressly recognized the right of monks to be buried in religion, that is to say, beneath the altar."
"The world is as nothing in presence of the cross. Martin, eleventh general of the Carthusians, gave his order this device, _Stat crux dam volvitur orbis._"