Lupicinus and his younger brother Romanus, seeking solitude, climbed the rocks among the pines of the Jura, and established themselves in the wilderness of Joux, living on wild fruits and plants. They were both young; and they soon found that it was impossible for them to maintain life on the scanty food yielded by the mountains. They therefore descended to the plains, and entered the cottage of a poor woman, and told her how they had tried to serve God in the midst of the rocks, but had found such a life insupportable. The woman sharply rebuked them for having put their hand to the plough, and then turned back, and they filled with shame, turned their faces once more to the mountains, and penetrated its recesses. And then many came to them from all quarters, and the grain and herbs they had sown and planted sprang up, and they cut down trees, and built the monastery of Condate.[72] But soon the place was too strait for them, and a colony went forth, and founded Lauconne, also in the Jura, and another was established at Romainmoutier. Lupicinus was abbot, and all obeyed him. He is said by S. Gregory of Tours to have been very austere and stern in the maintenance of discipline, so that from his harshness some brethren fled, but the contemporary writer gives a very different picture of him. A story of his severity, with which the mildness of his brother contrasts pleasingly, has been related in the life of S. Romanus (Feb. 28th). [72] Afterwards S. Ouyan, and then S. Claude, after the bishop of Besancon, who reformed it in 635. But if he could be harsh at times, at others he overflowed with gentleness. He wore a rough garment made of the skins of beasts stitched together, and wooden shoes, or rather sandals.[73] When others retired to rest after singing vespers, he retreated to his oratory, however cold the weather, meditating and dozing till the midnight office; in the quaint Latin of his biographer it is said that he entered the oratory "mæditaturus potius quam repausaturus" (to meditate rather than to repose.) [73] Lignea sola, quæ vulgo soccos monasteria vocitant Gallicana, continuato est usu.