And so it came about; for some days later, at the siege of the castle of Grancy, Gérard fell, struck by a lance; and, covered with blood, was carried into the fortress prison. Then he recalled Bernard's saying, saw his destiny clearly, and accepted the religious life. Bernard's brothers were among the company who had knocked that day at the gate of Citeaux. The new-comers remained for a week in the guest house of the monastery. On the eighth day they were taken into the chapter house, where the Abbot and his monks were assembled. As they knelt before him, the Abbot put to each of them the question prescribed by the rule: "What seek you?" to which they replied in turn: "My Father, God's Mercy, and yours." Then were read to them the stricter points of the Cistercian rule, and the Abbot dismissed them saying, "My sons; may God fulfil in you that which His Grace has begun."[104] From the commencement of his novitiate, Bernard practised austerities that were severe--even for a Cistercian. He would kneel until, on rising, his swollen limbs refused, almost, to support him, and, while always ready with a helping hand to lighten the toil of other monks in the forest or the marsh, he prepared himself for his labours with nourishment so poor that his body wasted and fever consumed him, until his life was despaired of. Devoting all his mind to the inward and spiritual, to answering well the question he was always asking himself, "Bernarde ad quid venisti?" (Bernard, wherefore art thou here?), he seems to have been almost unobservant of outward things. The old chronicler relates how, one day, being thirsty, the saint drank, without noticing its taste, (nihil sapiebat gustandi) a jar of oil whose contents he had mistaken for water. On another occasion, when asked whether the ceiling of his cell was flat or vaulted, he was quite unable to answer. The immediate result of the coming of such a man, with such companions, was an enormous increase in the numbers and power of that order. Postulates flocked in hundreds to the Abbey of Citeaux, and, by the year 1113, it had become necessary to establish daughter abbeys. The first was La Ferté (Firmitas), so called to signify the strength and consistency that the Almighty had already bestowed upon the rising order. Then followed Pontigny, where Bernard's friend, Hugues de Mâcon, was sent as abbot; then, in 1115, Morimond, and Clairvaux (Claire Vallée)--once the robber-haunted Valley of Wormwood. Before long, the order had the choice of the fairest fields of France; indeed, of all Europe. But Clairvaux had no abbot; and Citeaux must supply one. The choice fell upon St. Bernard, twenty-five years of age, hardly out of his novitiate, scarce able to support the exercise of his rule, and little fitted, as it seemed, to undertake a voyage of discovery to the loneliest forest in all the diocese of Langres. Yet he must go.