[...] When a certain peasant, as Gregory of Tours relates, wished to plow on the Lord's day, immediately, his fingers contracting, the handle of the axe with which he wished to clean the plowshare stuck fast to his right hand. But after two years, in the church of Saint Julian, by his prayers he was cured. [...] There was also another Julian, who, unknowing, killed both his parents. And when this Julian, the aforesaid young and noble man, on a certain day was engaged in hunting and was pursuing a stag he had found, suddenly the stag, by divine prompting, turned toward him and said to him:
'You who pursue me will be the slayer of your father and your mother!' Hearing this, he was greatly terrified and, lest perchance there should befall him what he had heard from the stag, he secretly departed, leaving all things behind. He came to a distant region and there attached himself to a certain prince, and bore himself so vigorously everywhere, both in war and in peace, that the prince made him a knight and gave him in marriage a certain castellan widow, and he received the castle as her dowry. Meanwhile the parents of Julian, grieving exceedingly over the loss of their son Julian, went wandering everywhere and anxiously sought their son. At length they came to the castle where Julian was in command. But at that time Julian had by chance left the castle.
When Julian's wife had seen them and had inquired who they were, and they had related all that had befallen their son, she understood that they were her husband's parents—I suppose because she had perhaps often heard this from her husband. So she received them kindly and, for love of her husband, gave up her bed to them and laid herself another little bed elsewhere. Now when morning had come, the castellan went off to church; and behold Julian, coming in the morning, entered the bedchamber as if to wake his wife, and finding two sleeping together—his wife, as he thought, with her adulterer—silently drawing his sword, he slew them both together.
But going out of the house, he saw his wife returning from church, and astonished, he asked who those were who were sleeping in his bed. And she said: 'They are your parents, who sought you for a very long time, and I lodged them in your bedchamber.' Hearing this, he, almost lifeless, began to weep most bitterly and to say: 'Alas, wretched man, what shall I do? For I have killed my sweetest parents. Behold, the word of the stag has been fulfilled, which, while I wished to avoid, I have, most wretched, fulfilled. Now farewell, sweetest sister, for I shall not rest henceforth until I know that God has accepted my penance.' To him she:
'Far be it, sweetest brother, that I should forsake you and that you should go away without me; but I who was your partner in joy will be your partner also in sorrow.' Then, departing together, beside a certain great river where many were in peril, they established a very large hospice, that there they might do penance and might continually ferry across all who wished to cross the river and receive into their lodging all the poor. But after a long time, in the middle of the night, while Julian, weary, was resting and the frost was severe, he heard a voice pitifully lamenting and, in a mournful voice, calling upon Julian to ferry him across the river.
Hearing this, he rose up in haste and, finding the man now failing from the cold, carried him into his house, and kindling a fire, strove to warm him. But when he could not be warmed, and Julian feared lest he should die there, he carried him into his own little bed and carefully covered him. After a little while, that man, who had appeared so sick and as it were leprous, resplendent, mounted up to the heavens and said to his host: 'Julian, the Lord has sent me to you, commanding you that He has accepted your penance, and that both of you, after a little while, shall rest in the Lord.' And so that man vanished, and Julian with his wife, after a little while, full of good works and almsgiving, rested in the Lord. [...]