"I have nothing to ask of you, my mother, but the permission to remain here to pray to God day and night, that we may meet each other in paradise."
"We shall meet in paradise or its surroundings, with the help of God, my son. When I go there you shall have warning; you shall hear the song of the angels."
"In fact," continues the French legend, "the evening of her decease and the next day, all those that were near saw a brilliant ladder by the side of her oratory, one end reaching to the skies, by which angels ascended and descended singing the most melodious motets and canticles."
The pious woman-poet, who had given to the church such a saint as Hervé, well deserved that God's angels should sing, making a festival for her last hour.
Hervé, guided by Gurfoed, arrived at the bedside of his dying mother, in time, if not to see her, (he could never see her except in heaven,) at least to receive her blessing, and to mingle his canticles with those of the pious companions of Rivanone, truly angelic choirs.
IV.
After the death of his mother, Hervé returned to the hermitage of his uncle; but Gurfoed, wishing to live a still more retired life, abandoned his dwelling, and buried himself in the forest. Aided by some pious men, who, in order to work and pray under his direction, had built their cabins by the side of his, the saint continued to hold the school of his predecessor. This school prospered; and every evening could be seen a crowd of children coming from it, who assembled there in the morning from all the manors, as well as from all the surrounding cottages; a crowd as noisy, says a poet, as a swarm of bees issuing from the hollow of an oak. The master, being blind, could not teach them their letters; but he taught them canticles, maxims in verse, religious and moral aphorisms, without omitting those precepts of pure civility, so necessary to coarse natures; and while exercising their memory he cultivated their understanding and their heart: he polished their rude manners; he endeavored, finally, to make men of them while bending their restless natures under the curb of his discipline. Lessons of wisdom were not clothed in other form in those heroic times; poetry and music, inseparable from each other, had always been considered by the ancients as necessary to cultivation, not only on account of the harmony which they produced, but for utility, instruction, and civilization of the people. Hervé in taking them for the basis of his instruction, followed, without doubt, the counsels of Aristotle. It is said that Orpheus thus civilized people by his songs. Those of Hesiod have come to us, and present us with valuable examples of that didactic poetry, the first with all nations. But though we have left us some poems of Saint Hervé, they are very few in number; the most were composed rather in his [{819}] spirit and according to his rules than by himself. They give him the honor of those aphorisms to which his name is given, which, at least, have the strong imprint of the instructive poetry of the monks; they turn upon three of the virtues which the religions principally endeavored to inculcate in their Ignorant pupils, idle and independent, as are all barbarians, namely, the love of instruction, the love of work, and the love of discipline, elements which are the strength of all civilized society.
"It is better to instruct a little child than to amass riches for him."
Saint Cado, the teacher of Hervé's father, said the same thing in other terms, "There is no wealth without study;" and he added, "There is no wisdom without science, no independence without science, no liberty, no beauty, no nobleness, no victory without science," and, giving to science its true foundation, he thus terminated his eloquent enumeration:
"No science without God."