owers brought to Rouen, was destined to work
wonders on its new soil. For these pirates took the creed, the
language and the manners of the French, and kept their own vigorous
characteristics as mercenaries, plunderers, conquerors, crusaders. If
in peace they invented nothing, they were quick to learn and adapt,
generous to disseminate. In Rouen itself they welcomed scholars,
poets, theologians, and artists. Their Scandinavian vigour mated to
the vivacity of Gaul was to produce a conquering race in Europe. At
Bayeux, where a Saxon emigration had settled down long before the days
of Rollo, the type of the original Norman can still be seen. The same
type comes out in every famous Norman of to-day, in that "figure de
coq," with its high nose and clever brow that marks the bold nature
tempered with the cunning, the lawyer and the soldier mixed. To these
men Rollo gave land instead of booty. Of himself and his doings little
accurate is known; but from the results of his rule his greatness can
be fairly judged, for he held his sceptre like a battleaxe, and
increased the bounds of his dominion. It was within his capital that
his rule was chiefly beneficial. Here and there his Norman names have
survived, as in Robec (Redbeck) Dieppedal (Deepdale) or Caudebec
(Coldbeck), but in the main he proved at once the high adaptability of
his race. His first assembly was of necessity aristocratic, and
without ecclesiastics, for every landowner was Scandinavian, and the
remnant of the aborigines were serfs whose revolts were pitilessly
crushed. Twice a year his barons came to his court, as feudatory
judges, the first faint beginnings of the Echiquier de Normandie. His
laws were made then, and made to be respected, and it is even said
that the cry of "Haro!" which was heard far later in the history of
Rouen, originated in the "Ha! Rou!" with which the citizens then began
their appeal to him for justice. The tale of the golden bracelets he
hung in the branches of his hunting forest by the Seine, which stayed
three years without being stolen, is an indication of the rigour of
the laws he made. In about 930 he died, and was the first layman to be
buried in the cathedral he had improved:--

"En mostier Nostre Dame, el coste verz midi
Ont li cler e li lai li cors ensepulcri."

His son, William Longsword, succeeded to his Duchy, enlarged by the
additions which Rollo had known how to secure during the strife
between Laon and Paris that