ng it into his body.

When the Lady Anna died, her husband, tired of war, power, and
governance, distributed his property among his children. Under his
armour he had long worn the monk's heart, and now he was able to take
the monk's dress, and to "labour for peace after life, as he had
already won it in life." So he took Hugh and Hugh's money with him, and
went off to the little priory of Villarbenoit (of seven canon power),
which bordered upon his own lands, and which he and his forbears had
cherished. This little priory was a daughter of Grenoble (St. Hugh of
Grenoble being, as we infer, a spiritual splendour to the De Avalons),
and, not least in attraction, there was a canon therein, far-famed for
heavenly wisdom and for scholarship besides, who kept a school and
taught sound theology and classics, under whom sharp young Hugh might
climb to heights both of ecclesiastical and also of heavenly preferment.
Great was the delight of the canons at their powerful postulant and his
son, and great the pains taken over the latter's education. The
schoolmaster laid stress upon authors such as Prudentius, Sedulius, and
Fulgentius. By these means the boy not only learnt Latin, but he also
tackled questions of Predestination and Grace, glosses upon St. Paul,
hymns and methods of frustrating the Arian. Above all, he was exercised
in the Divine Library, as they called the Bible, taught by St. Jerome.
Hugh was of course the favourite of the master, who whipt him with
difficulty, and kept him from the rough sports of his fellow scholars,
the future soldiers, and "reared him for Christ." The boy had a masterly
memory and a good grip of his work, whether it were as scholar, server,
or comrade. The Prior assigned to him the special task of waiting upon
his old father. That modest, kind-hearted gentleman was getting infirm,
and the young fellow was delighted to be told off to lead him, carry
him, dress and undress him, tie his shoes, towel him, make his bed, cook
for him and feed him, until the time of the old knight's departure
arrived.

The dates of St. Hugh's life and ministrations must be taken with a
grain of salt. The authorities differ considerably, and it is impossible
to clap a date to some of the saint's way-marks without first slapping
in the face some venerable chronicler, or some thought-worn modern
historian. If we say with the Great Life that Hugh was ordained Levite
in his nineteenth year, we upset Giraldus Cambrensis and