he had been asked, and demands payment. "Finish," he goes on, with a boldness which challenges some sympathy, "what you have begun, and then we will settle about my promise; such was our agreement."[1] It is characteristic of Rufus not to be angry at a really bold word. Evidently entering into the grotesque side of the dispute, he rejects the doctrine of payment by results; he answers that he has done his best, and that, though he had not succeeded, he cannot go away with nothing for his trouble.[2] At last, after some further haggling, the parties in this strange dispute come to a compromise. The Jew pays, and the King receives, half the sum which had been promised in the beginning.
William's defiance of God.
1093.
A king of whom such stories as these could be told,
whether every detail is literally true or not, must have
utterly cast aside all the decencies of his own or of any
other age. But Rufus, according to the tales told of him,
went even further than this. He is charged with a kind
of personal defiance of the Almighty, quite distinct alike
from mere carelessness and from speculative unbelief.
When he recovered from the sickness which forms such
an epoch in his life, "God," he said, "shall never see
me a good man; I have suffered too much at his
hands."[3] He mocked at God's judgement and doubted
his justice—his disbelief in the ordeal is quoted as an
- ↑ Eadmer, u.s. "Filius meus jam nunc et in Christi confessione constantior et mihi est solito factus infestior; et dicis"—mark the scriptural turn—"'Feci quod petisti, redde quod promisisti?' Immo quod cœpisti primo perfice, et tunc demum de pollicitis age. Sic enim convenit inter nos."
- ↑ Ib. "Feci quantum potui; verum, quamvis non proficerim, minime tamen feram me sine fructu laborasse."
- ↑ Ib. 54. "Quod Deus nunquam eum bonum habiturus esset pro malo quod sibi inferret." The words are spoken to Bishop Gundulf. Eadmer comments; "In cunctis erat fortunatus, ac si verbis ejus hoc modo respondit Deus, 'Si te pro malo, ut dicis, numquam bonum habebo, probabo an saltem pro bono possim te bonum habere, et ideo in omni quod tu bonum æstimas velle tuum adimplebo."
