Let us go back and see what Bodo’s wife, Ermentrude, is doing. She is busy too; it is the day on which the chicken-rent is due--a fat pullet and five eggs in all. She leaves her second son, aged nine, to look after the baby Hildegard and calls on one of the neighbours, who has to go up to the big house too. The neighbour is a serf and she has to take the steward a piece of woollen cloth, which will be sent away to St. Germain to make a habit for a monk. Her husband is working all day in the lord’s vineyards, for on this estate the serfs generally tend the vines, while the freemen do most of the ploughing. Ermentrude and the serf’s wife go together up to the house. There all is busy. In the men’s workshop are several clever workmen--a shoemaker, a carpenter, a blacksmith, and two silversmiths; there are not more, because the best artisans on the estates of St. Germain live by the walls of the abbey, so that they can work for the monks on the spot and save the labour of carriage. But there were always some craftsmen on every estate, either attached as serfs to the big house, or living on manses of their own, and good landowners tried to have as many clever craftsmen as possible. Charlemagne ordered his stewards each to have in his district “good workmen, namely, blacksmiths, goldsmiths, silversmiths, shoemakers, turners, carpenters, swordsmakers, fishermen, foilers, soapmakers, men who knew how to make beer, cider, perry and all other kinds of beverages, bakers to make pasty for our table, netmakers who know how to make nets for hunting, fishing and fowling, and others too many to be named.” And some of these workmen are to be found working for the monks in the estate of Villaris.