then, speed and help My refugee: take up the Image of My
Son, crucified for it: take instruments for incense and wax. Ring out
the signals of My Church for a solemn assembly; raise high your hymnal
voices, open the doors of My house and its inner shrines: place near to
the altar, which holds the Body of My Son, what is left of that brother
or sister; finally, cover him a bier with costly palls, for at last he
triumphs: crowd it with lamps and candles, circle round him, overthrown
as he is, with helping crowds of servants. Do more. Repeat the votive
offering of My Son. Make the richest feast, and thus the panting spirit,
restless and weary with the jars of the wonted mortality it has just
laid by, may breathe to strength: and the flesh, empty for the while of
its old tenant, and now to be nursed in the lap of the Mother Earth, may
be bedewed with a most gracious holiness, so that at the last day when
it is sweetly reunited to its well-known companion, it may gladly flower
anew and put on with joy the everlasting freshness." This was no sudden
seizure and passing emotion at the romance of funerals. He issued a
general order in his diocese forbidding parish priests to bury the
bodies of grown persons, if he were by to do it. If it were a case of
good life, the more need to honour; if of an evil life, such would all
the more yearn for greater succour. So he went to all, and if they were
poor he ordered his almoner to find the lights and other requirements.
Any funeral would bring him straight from his horse to pray at the bier.
If he had no proper book wherein he might read without halting (and his
eyes waxed dim at the last) he would stand near the officiant, chaunt
the psalms with him, say the amens, and be clerk, almost a laic. If he
had the right book, he would be priest, say the prayers, use the holy
water, swing the censer, cast on the mould, then give shrift and benison
and go on his way. If the place were a large city and many bodies came
for burial he did just the same until all were finished. Potentates
expecting to eat bread with him were often vexed and complained at these
delays; but, host or guest, he had more appetite for holy than for
social functions. King Richard at Rouen, like his father before him,
with all the Court and the Royal Family, when they invited Hugh to
table, had to keep fasting while Hugh performed these higher duties
without clipping or diminishing the office. When the king's servants
chafed,