Meanwhile Ascelin, whom we left in the deserted abbey, did not waste his time in barren regrets. He set himself to consider what he could do to provide for the continuance of God’s service in that place, and at last resolved on a step which must be acknowledged as not a little creditable in a monk of the Age of Iron: he opened a school. He sought out and assembled together the youths of the neighbourhood, and among them his own nephew, and taught them to read. There is something both picturesque and touching in the idea thus presented to us, of the old man keeping school among his ruins, and acting as the faithful guardian of the holy spot, doing what good he could whilst time and strength remained to him, and with too much quiet confidence in God to lose heart and courage because all else was lost. At last, however, he died, persevering to the last in the observance of his monastic rule, and then his scholars were scattered, the forest thickets grew up round the ruins, and gradually the ancient solitude recovered its former wildness, and became the resort of wild animals. In the next generation, the names of Ouche and St. Evroult had passed utterly out of mind, till one day a peasant in search of a strayed bullock, followed him into the deserted valley, and making his way through bushes and brambles, found his beast couched on a little plot of soft green grass, before what seemed a ruined altar, surrounded by grey walls held together by ivy roots. And then grey-headed men were found who had heard their fathers talk of the time when St. Evroult, who despised the world, had made himself a dwelling in these wilds, and how his brethren had been driven away by the soldiers of Hugh the Great. The good knight Gaston de Montfort rebuilt the church, and the abbey was afterwards restored and colonised from Jumièges; and at last, in 1130, two hundred years after the forcible translation of the relics from Ouche to Orleans, they were brought back to their rightful home, in consequence of the eloquent entreaties of St. Bernard.[127]