_The Prayers of the Saint confer Beauty on an Ugly Man._
And among the chief men of Hibernia was one named Eugenius, who had
long resisted the preaching of the saint, but, being at length
compelled by the argument of the living Word, and convinced by
indisputable miracles, he at length believed, and, by the water of the
holy font, was renewed in Christ. And this man was rich and powerful,
but in his countenance and his person he was more deformed than all his
people. And after complaining of his deformity unto the saint, he
besought him to banish by the sending up of his prayers the hideous
ugliness of his face, and thereby show the omnipotence of his God, on
whom all the people believed. At length the saint, being moved with
the entreaties of the man thus ashamed of himself, asked to whose form
he would desire to be likened. Then he, regarding the people placed
around him, preferred the form of Roichus, an ecclesiastic, the keeper
of Saint Patrick's books; and this man was by birth a Briton, by degree
a deacon, a kinsman of the holy prelate, and beautiful in his form
above all men in those countries dwelling. Nevertheless was he a man
of most holy life, so that he might say with the Psalmist, "Lord, by
thy will thou hast added righteousness to my beauty!" But the saint
caused them to sleep in one bed and under one covering; and, standing
over them, he lifted his pure hands in prayer. Wonderful and unwonted
event! When they awaked and arose, not any difference appeared in
their countenance; the tonsure alone distinguished the one from the
other. And all who beheld admired; but more exceedingly joyful was he
who experienced in himself this miracle.