About five years before the famine of 1033, his beloved wife Marceline died. He still inhabited his hut, now shared with him by his son Den-Brao and the latter's wife Gervaise, together with their three children, of whom the eldest, Nominoe, was nine, the second, Julyan, seven, and the youngest, Jeannette, two years of age. Den-Brao, a serf like his father, was since his youth employed in a neighboring stone quarry. A natural taste for masonry developed itself in the lad. During his hours of leisure he loved to carve in certain not over hard stones the outlines of houses and cottages, the structure of which attracted the attention of the master mason of Compiegne. Observing Den-Brao's aptitude, the artisan taught him to hew stone, and soon confided to him the plans of buildings and the overseership in the construction of several fortified donjons that King Henry I ordered to be erected on the borders of his domains in Compiegne. Den-Brao, being of a mild and industrious disposition and resigned to servitude, had a passionate love for his trade. Often Yvon would say to him: "My child, these redoubtable donjons, whose plans you are sketching and which you build with so much care, either serve now or will serve some day to oppress our people. The bones of our oppressed and martyrized brothers will rot in these subterraneous cells reared above one another with such an infernal art!" "Alack! You are right, father," Den-Brao would at such times answer, "but if not I, some others will build them ... my refusal to obey my master's orders would have no other consequence than to bring upon my head a beating, if not mutilation and even death." Gervaise, Den-Brao's wife, an industrious housekeeper, adored her three children, all of whom, in turn, clung affectionately to Yvon.