Hugh of Avalon was born in Avalon Castle in 1140, a year in which the great tempest of Stephen's misrule was raging. In France, Louis VII. has already succeeded his father, Louis VI.; the Moors are in Spain, and Arnold of Brescia is the centre of controversy. Avalon Castle lies near Pontcharra, which is a small town on the Bredo, which flows into the Isere and thence into the Rhone. It is not to be confused with Avallon of Yonne. The Alpine valleys about Pontcharra are lovely with flowers and waters, and have in them the "foot-prints of lost Paradise." Burgundy here owed some loyalty to the empire rather than to France, and its dukes tried to keep up a semi-independent kingdom by a balanced submission to their more powerful neighbours. The very name Hugh was an old ducal name, and there is little doubt that William de Avalon, Hugh's father, claimed kin with the princes of his land. He was a "flower of knighthood" in battles not now known. He was also by heredity of a pious mind. Hugh's mother, Anna, a lovely and wealthy lady, of what stock does not appear, was herself of saintly make. She "worshipped Christ in His limbs," by constantly washing the feet of lepers, filling these wretched outcasts with hope, reading to them and supplying their wants. She seems to have been a woman of intellectual parts, for though she died before Hugh was ten, he had already learned under her, if not from her, to use language as the sacrament of understanding and understanding as the symbol of truth. He had some grip of grammar and logic, and though he did not brood over "Ovid's leasings or Juvenal's rascalities," rather choosing to ponder upon the two Testaments, yet we may gather that his Latin classics were not neglected. The spiritual life of Grenoble had been nourished by a noble bishop, also Hugh, who had seen the vision of seven stars resting upon a certain plot of ground, which induced him to grant the same to St. Bruno, the founder of the Grande Chartreuse. Here he served himself as a simple monk, laying aside his bishop's robes, not a score of miles from Avalon. This Hugh was a religious and free thinking man, who, though he found evil a great metaphysical stumbling block to faith, yet walked painfully by the latter. He died in 1132 or thereabouts, and his life was most probably the occasion of our Hugh's name, and of much else about him.