by Gilbert de Lacy, who was studying there. Next
day, Palm Sunday, he sped on to Fontevrault and met the bearers just at
the doors. He paid all the royal honours he could to his late Master and
was entertained at the Monastery. For three days he ceased not to say
Mass and the Psalms for the kings lying there, as for all the faithful
who lay quiet in Christ, prayed for their pardon and the bliss of
everlasting light. A beautiful picture this of the brave old bishop in
the Norman Abbey Church, where two kings, his friend and his forgiven
foe, lay "shrouded among the shrouded women" in that Holy Week of long
ago!

This compassion was not only a matter of honour, but of faith. It was
one of the principles of his life and conduct that hereby was set forth
the love of God, and applied to the needs of man. He used often to say
that countless other things manifested the boundless love of God to
men, but of those we know, these surpass the greatness of all the rest,
which He ceases not to bestow before man's rise and after his setting.
"To touch lightly a few of these in the case of men who rise and set:
God the Son of God gave for each man before he was born the ransom of
His own death. God the Father sent His own same Son into the world to
die for the man: God the Holy Ghost poured Himself out an earnest for
him. So together the whole Trinity, one God, together set up the
Sacraments by which he is born, cleansed, defended, and strengthened,
gave the props of His own law to rule and teach him, and generously made
provision for his good by other mysterious means. When man's fitful life
is past and its course cut off by death, when his once dearest look on
him now with aversion, when parents and children cast him forth with
anxious haste from the halls once his, God's most gracious kindness
scorns not what all others despise. Then straightway He ordains not only
angelic spirits to the ward of the soul at its return to its Maker, but
He sends for the burial service those who are first and foremost of His
earthly servants, to wit the priests and others in the sacred orders.
And this is His command to them: 'Behold,' He says, 'My priests and
caretakers of My palaces in the world, behold My handiwork. I have
always loved it. I spared not My only Son for it but made Him share in
its mortality and its death. Behold, I say, that is now become a burden
to its former lovers and friends. They crowd to cast it out and drive it
forth. Away,