Although he is to be a warrior, Aimery has been given a certain training in the science of letters. It is true that many seigneurs cannot read a word on the parchments which their scriveners interpret, draw up, or seal for them,[56] but this is really very inconvenient. Conon is genuinely thankful he is not thus at the mercy of Father Grégoire. Another reason for literacy is that delightful books of romantic adventure are multiplying. The younger brother has, therefore, been sent over to the school at the neighboring monastery, where (along with a few other sons of noblemen) he has had enough of the clerk's art switched into him to be able to read French with facility, to pick out certain Latin phrases, and to form letters clumsily on wax tablets--writing with a stylus something after the manner of the ancients.[57] Once possessed of this wonderful art of reading that Aimery had while yet a lad, he could delve into the wonderful parchments of romances which told him of the brave deeds done of old. Especially, he learned all about the Trojan War, which was one long baronial feud between North French cavaliers fighting for the fair Helen, imprisoned in a strong castle. His sympathy was excited for Hector as the under dog. He read of many exploits which had escaped the knowledge of Homer, but which were well known to Romance trouvères. He reveled in scenes of slaughter whereof the figures are very precise, it being clearly stated that 870,000 Greeks and 680,000 Trojans perished in the siege of that remarkable Trojan fortress. [Illustration: A TEACHER HOLDING A FERULE IN HIS HAND Restored by Viollet-Le-Duc from a thirteenth-century manuscript in the Bibliothèque nationale.] Almost equally interesting was the history of Alexander, based on the version of the pseudo-Callisthenes. This was very unlike the accounts which other ages consider authentic. The names of the battles with Darius were altered, strange adventures with the Sirens crept into the narrative, and finally Alexander (the tale ran) died sorely lamenting that he could not conquer France and make Paris his capital. The story of Cæsar is also available, but it seems less romantic, although full of episodes of fairies and dwarfs. For the history of France, Aimery has learned that the country was originally settled by exiled Trojans; later the Romans came, and some time later one meets the great Emperor Charlemagne, whose exploits entwine themselves with Charles Martel's defeat of the Saracens. Charlemagne, we gather, conducted a crusade to the Holy Land and took Jerusalem, although later the Infidels regained it. Recent French history remains very mixed in the young noble's mind until the great Council of Clermont (1095), which launched the First Crusade. In the century after that great episode, however, the events stand out clearly, and of course he knows all the history of the local baronial houses down to the story of the petty feud forty years ago between two Burgundian counts.