Of course, the prime centers of Adela's life are the rearing of her children and the management of her servants. When little François and Anseau were being born, the castle bell, and that, too, of the village church, were all the time rung furiously to induce the saints to ease their mother's labor. Sensible Father Grégoire had to interpose his ghostly authority to check the midwife from at once plunging the feet of the newly born into icy water to toughen them to the cold, or rubbing their cheeks with a gold piece to make them rich. Of course, Conon was delighted each time they told him, "A sturdy son!" On François' advent he called all his vassals to a feast. "Be joyous!" he proclaimed. "There is born the seigneur from whom you will hold your lands. He will give you rich furs, white and gray, beautiful arms, and horses of price. Yes, in twenty years my son will be dubbed a knight!" [Illustration: CRADLE Thirteenth-century manuscript in the Cambridge Library (Green).] The young St. Aliquis barons were rocked in beautifully carved cradles. They were bathed before a great fire and wrapped, not merely in the usual long baby clothes, but in little robes of silk and furs, even of precious ermine, to proclaim their noble rank. They were, of course, baptized at first opportunity, because unbaptized children had very dubious chances in the next world. Adela had been unable to go to the ceremony for either, but there had been a great gathering of relatives and vassals; for a christening is the formal acknowledgment of the child's legitimacy and settles many claims to inheritance. A child must have three godparents, two of its own sex and one of the other. At the font, one of these holds the babe round the body, and each of the others grasps a leg. Then the priest dips the child completely in the water. "Bare as a babe at baptism," runs the saying. Of course, the higher the rank of the godparents, the luckier the infant. François is proud already because the Duke of Quelqueparte calls him "godson," and Anseau because he is styled the same by the high Countess of Blois.