lands.[1] On the other side he bade him look on the city itself thronged with people, its noble churches, its goodly houses. The modern reader stops for a moment to think that, of the buildings which then met the eye of Conan, churches, castles, halls of wealthy burghers like himself, clustering within and without the ancient walls, all doubtless goodly works according to the sterner standard of that day, hardly a stone is left to meet his own eye as he looks down from hill or tower on the great buildings of modern Rouen. It was another Saint Romanus, another Saint Ouen, of far different outline and style from those on which we now gaze, which Henry called on Conan to admire at that awful moment. He bade him mark the splendour of the city; he bade him think of its dignity as the spot which had been from of old the head of Normandy.[2] The trembling wretch felt the mockery; all that was left to him was to groan and cry for mercy. He confessed his guilt; he simply craved for grace in the name of their common Maker. He would give to his lord all the gold and silver of his hoard and the hoards of his kinsfolk; he would wipe out the stain of his past disloyalty by faithful service for the rest of his days.[3] The Conqueror would have granted such a prayer in sheer greatness of soul; the Red King might well have deemed it beneath him to harm so lowly a suppliant. But the stern purpose of Henry was fixed, and his wrath, when it was
- ↑ Ord. Vit. 690 C. "En, ad meridiem delectabile parcum patet oculis tuis. En saltuosa regio silvestribus abundans feris. Ecce Sequana piscosum flumen Rotomagensem murum allambit, navesque pluribus mercimoniis refertas huc quotidie devehit."
- ↑ Ib. D. "En ex alia parte civitas populosa, mœnibus sacrisque templis et urbanis ædibus speciosa, cui jure a priscis temporibus subjacet Normannia tota."
- ↑ Ib. "Pro redemptione mei domino meo aurum dabo et argentum, quantum reperire potero in thesauris meis meorumque parentum, et pro culpa infidelitatis fidele usque ad mortem rependam servitium."
