Therefore, content, they withdrew to a cottage set apart far off in the secluded countryside, where in the morning they prepared to set out on their return, when the first dawn, giving birth to the day, should redden. The door of the hut lay open; the host, a man, came out from his dwelling; and there the man caught sight of the well-known pig — wondrous to relate — standing ready before the doors, as though it spoke to say it had been sent there by the Lord; and like one giving greeting it licked the footsteps of its rejoicing master, and with a gesture grunted gently to its foster-son, and sniffing, moving its snout, it gave him kisses, and, as if recognizing that it owed the master's vow, it pressed itself forward and with its throat invited the slow knives.
Under what guide, I ask, did it make its way through unknown territory? What feet did it take up, that it could run so far — it which, at the very beginning of the road, gave out over a short distance, weighed down by the bulk of its flowing fatness? Surely no hand carried so great a beast over the long ridge, nor any lap conveyed it, nor did its own mind drive it to penetrate so vast a road through an unknown region — when even men, vigorous in the reasoning of the mind and easily guided through unknown places by the interpreting of language, if they lack a guide by whom the way may shine for them, are entangled by blind error in foreign lands. Who then directed its journey for it? Whence came the will by which it should follow its masters, or even the sense to do so?
Aware that it was bound by its vow through long age... Whence came to the beast this care, which rarely rouses even the faithful — that, as though culpable by its own deed, the sluggish sow, girt with holy fear, having lingered behind, should take pains to atone by coming for the guilt it had contracted by remaining, and should balance the fault of its idle sloth, although it followed its departed masters in obedience too late? An admirable wonder lies open, granted by heavenly power to so great a daring of the pig: that it should go alone the long journey, and that the swine should have been of such intelligence that it could trace out by a straight track through unknown spaces.
And what too of this so great a thing, that, coming hither from the territories beyond Beneventum, whether some bold one sent it across the public causeway laid through the middle of the highway — yet no frequent encounters caught it — or whether it made its tracks through hidden glades, no hand met it with iron, nor any wild beast with its bite. What hand alone led it, or protected it as it went? Surely it deceived eyes, hidden by some cloud, or, snatched up by the air with the wind, came rather than by foot, and suddenly, gliding down to the Lord's very lodging, the four-footed guest halted before the unknown threshold. Let me tell another wondrous sign, close and akin to it.
For a young heifer of the herd-cattle kind, separated by birth — certain men, having set out hither from an equally distant home, had reared her, taken apart at first from the udder of her milk-giving mother, pledged by a votive offering to our poor, whom Felix's bounteous grace here feeds, gathered together in great numbers by the lavish resources of many. So when the heifer, now grown, would frolic on adult limbs, made fit for the vow by her now fully developed body, they brought her from home. But — as it seems to be the custom of those who carry their vows from afar to pay them to the holy martyrs — they undertook to yoke her, harnessed to a wagon by which she might be drawn; although unaccustomed, yet gentle, and already before subdued to human uses, in which her masters had reared her, taken small from the herd's company, and had mingled her with their dwellings and their food.
Hence, thinking that, its wildness now tamed, she would readily yield her docile neck under the yoke, they coaxed her with a stroking hand and tried to draw her into the confined space. But she, trustful, at first consents to the familiar touches caressing her, and follows those who call her. Yet when, now brought close to the yoke, she caught sight of the reins, and felt the straps being made ready for her neck, indignant at the trickery and suddenly transformed, she becomes wild; she takes neither the yoke on her neck nor the bonds on her throat, and, the hands overpowered and the straps shaken off, she leaps away from the company of those holding her, and seeks the far-off pathless fields, fleeing her masters and the dwellings she was used to. Nor far from the sight of men does she rush off, in the manner of a wild beast, and hides herself, a fugitive, in the blind glades;
For, fleeing her masters as they depart, standing at a distance, she flees in such a way that she does not allow herself to be left in the country. At last, when she catches sight of a wagon running, yoked to a pair of oxen, she takes on human understanding, and, as though aware that she is owed to the vow, she begins to be a companion to those setting out. Nor is she a companion far behind: she scorns to go as a companion in slow circuits, and, with a leap as if exulting, she passes by the groaning wheels and looks back on the column of slow effort, flying ahead; and now she no longer fears to be driven to the yoke, and becomes a friend, where before she was hateful, and goes before the wagon, until they came to the consecrated hall of Felix. There of her own accord she halts her step, and applies herself to the one calling her, and, as though guilty of the vow, she rejoices to stand in that very place to which the victim owes her own slaying.
She, the rebel, not subdued to human bonds, is led without any struggle to a peaceful death, submitting her undefiled neck to the yokes of the axe, about to make food for the poor from her slaughtered body; joyful she pours out her blood for her masters' vows. To what end is this? Surely there is no care for cattle with God, as the Apostle says? But He who made all things for our sake, the Author who works all things for us in all things, also through unwitting cattle works for us signs that have effect, and through clear marvels rouses our brute minds to strengthen faith and to trust in the truth — so that men, teachable, with tongues loosed into words, may not be silent about the Lord, whom dumb creatures proclaim by signs.