Lord De Freston and William Latimer looked with compassion. Each resolved to offer them present help, until they could find some locality or employment suited to their habits. Men long accustomed to the solitude of monastic life, where everything is conducted in regular order of time and occupation, do not find themselves about to be separated without emotion. They could see each other depart this life in their cells, with less tenderness and more resignation, than in the midst of life, or rather in its decline, to see each other take leave of home, for poverty, wretchedness, and uncertainty. The aged Prior was the first to break the silence, and did so with words which proved him to be possessed of those fraternal qualities of heart, which had felt the command, 'Love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous.' 'Brethren,' he said, 'our Society is this day dissolved, for I have no power to resist the Papal Bull; neither can I think of retaining the keys of the monastery a day longer than the time allotted us, forty-eight hours. Yet I cannot give up the society of those whom I have now, for forty-four years, presided over, without one single word of discord amongst us, without deep sorrow. I came myself from Britany, and, as you all know, whatever property I possessed was given to this monastery. We have lived here together in harmony, and I had hoped we should here have ended our years. I mourn to think how soon we must be scattered, and have our interest in each other dissolved; but ye have all heard the mandate. Farewell, ye happy hours of solitude and devotion! farewell, sharers of our common fortune, we must be parted! but whither shall we go? You, Robert Wolfren, where will you journey? You, Francis Wealey, where will you find abode? You, Thomas Wegg, might have found an asylum in Essex, but the Monastery of Walton is dissolved. Alan Aleto, farewell! Michael Milner, it will avail you nothing to go to Dodnesh; Lionel Foster, we were brothers before we came here, would we could so live together until we die! But where shall we all go? The world is wide enough, but it is, to our long habits of confinement, a desolation. If we must part, let us at least spend our last two days in devotion, that we may know how to commit ourselves to the waves of the world. Come, brethren, let us all to the chapel.' It was then that Lord De Freston spoke: