Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Wright - 1.djvu/490

316 "Another of his biographers conjectures that the prince of the apostles effected his restoration to health, because he had a special interest in the cure of a man destined by heaven to maintain the authority of the Holy See against heresy. However this may be, Ignatius assuredly recovered, although a slight deformity remained on his leg, caused by the protrusion of a bone under the knee. Grievously afflicted that the symmetry of his person should be thus spoiled, he determined to have the obnoxious bone cut off, and the operation was performed almost without producing a change of countenance in the hardy soldier. Notwithstanding all his care, however, his right leg always remained somewhat shorter that the left. Restrained from walking, and confined to his bed, he requested, in order to amuse himself, to be furnished with some books of chivalry, the sort of reading which chiefly occupied the attention of people of quality at that time; but instead of Palmerin of England, or Amadis of Gaul, they brought him The Lives of the Saints. At first he read them without any other view than that of beguiling the time; but by degrees he began to relish them, and at length became so absorbed in the study of asceticism, that he passed whole days in studying The Lives of the Saints, and finally made a