This she prayed him to devote to the furnishing of the necessary outfit for Gervaise.

She spent the rest of the day in the church of the hospital, had a long talk with her son in the evening, giving him her last charges as to his future life and conduct, and that night, as if she had now fulfilled her last duty on earth, she passed away, and was found by her attendant lying with a look of joy and peacefulness on her dead face.
Gervaise's grief was for a time excessive.

He was nearly twelve years old, and had never until now been separated from her even for a day.

She had often spoken to him of her end being near, but until the blow came he had never quite understood that it could be so.

She had, on the night before her death, told him that he must not grieve overmuch for her, for that in any case they must have soon been sundered, and that it was far better that he should think of her as at rest, and happy, than as leading a lonely and sorrowful life.
The grand prior, however, wisely gave him but little time to dwell upon his loss, but as soon as her funeral had taken place, handed him over to the knights who had the charge of the novices on probation, and instructed them in their military exercises, and of the chaplain who taught them such learning as was considered requisite for a knight of the Order.
The knights were surprised at the proficiency the lad had already attained in the use of his weapons.
"By St.Agatha," one of them exclaimed, after the conclusion of his first lesson, "you have had good teachers, lad, and have availed yourself rarely of them.