Germain, who was then at her father's palace,
persuaded her to embrace the religious life, and the disappointed King
sadly gave his consent. A great multitude assembled to accompany the
maiden in her renunciation of the world, "numbering in its midst four
bishops and many priests and virgins." We are told how they all took
ship together and sailed to Brittany. The Breton king gave the
princess land at Ploermel, and there she founded a great monastery,
where she lived till death claimed her.

_St Enora_

Several old Breton songs tell us the story of St Enora (or Honora),
the wife of Efflam (already alluded to in the chapter on Arthurian
legend), but these accounts vary very considerably in their
details. One account giving us "stern facts" relates how St Efflam
was betrothed for political reasons to Enora, a Saxon princess, and
speaks of how impossible it was to expect that such a union could
prove anything but disastrous when it was not a love match. So,
whether partly to escape from a married life which jarred his
susceptibilities, or entirely on account of his religious asceticism,
Efflam left his wife and crossed to Brittany to lead the life of a
religious hermit. One of the Breton songs gives the beginning of
the story in a much more picturesque way. It relates how Enora,
"beautiful as an angel," had many suitors, but would give her hand to
none save the Prince Efflam, "son of a stranger King." But Efflam,
torn by the desire to lead the religious life, far away from the
world, rose "in the midst of the night, his wedding night," and
crept softly away, no one seeing him save his faithful dog, which
he loved. So he came to the seashore and crossed to Brittany. The
story of his landing and his meeting with Arthur has already been
told, and we have seen how his fate was once more, by divine
agency, linked with that of Enora. The song tells us how the angels
carried the princess over the sea and set her on the door-sill of
her husband's cell. Presently she awoke, and, finding herself there,
she knocked three times and cried out to her husband that she was
"his sweetheart, his wife," whom God had sent. St Efflam, knowing her
voice, came out, and "with many godly words he took her hand in
his." One account says that he sent her to the south of Brittany to
found a convent for nuns, as he wished to devote his life entirely to
the service of God and the contemplation of nature. All versions
agree on the point that he bui