While Raymond was busy with his studies and his manly exercises, the mind of Bernard, even while giving the boy the benefit of his knowledge of the management of horses and the use of arms, was occupied with a very serious matter. As has been said before, the Countess of Viteau was one of the very few ladies in France who was fairly educated, and who took an interest in acquiring knowledge from books. This disposition, so unusual at that time, together with her well-known efforts to have her sons educated, even giving a helping hand herself whenever she found that she was qualified to do so, had attracted attention to her, and many people began to talk about her, as a woman who gave a great deal of time to useless pursuits. Why should a lady of her rank—these people said—wish to read books and study out the meaning of old manuscripts, as if she were of no higher station than a poor monk? If there were anything in the books and parchments which she ought to know, the priests would tell her all about it. But the Countess thought differently, and she kept on with her reading, which was almost entirely confined to religious works, and in this way she gradually formed some ideas about religious matters which were somewhat different from those taught at that time by the Church of Rome, or, at least, from those taught by the priests about her. She saw no harm in her opinions, and did not hesitate to speak of them to the priests who came to the chateau from a neighboring monastery, and even to argue in favor of them. The priests, however, did see harm in the ideas of the Countess, simply because, in those days, people had very narrow and bigoted ways of thinking in regard to religious affairs, and it was generally thought that any person having an opinion differing, even very little, from what was taught by the monks and priests, was doing a wicked thing to persist in such an opinion after he had been told it was wrong. For this reason, when the priests who had charge of the religious services at Viteau found that their arguments made no impression on the Countess, who was able to answer them back in such a way that they could find nothing more to say on their side of the question, they reported the state of affairs to some of the higher officers of the Church, and, in due time, a man was sent to Viteau to find out exactly what its mistress did think, and why she was so wicked as to think it.