religion, and also shows that the steady growth
in wealth and influence of the clergy through his reign, was not
unaccompanied by an immorality which was conspicuous under Archbishop
Hugh II., and became flagrant during the office of Mauger later on. It
appears that the Sacristan of St. Ouen fell most uncanonically in love
with a lady who dwelt on the other side of the Robec. On his way to
meet her one dark night, his foot slipped from the plank that crossed
the rapid little stream, and he fell into the water. Whereon a
sprightly devilkin seized hurriedly upon his soul and was on the point
of bearing it away to Hell, when an angel (mindful doubtless of the
abbey's piety) arrived, objecting with a nicely argued piece of logic
that the sacristan had not been carried off "en male veie," but before
any sin had been committed. So the contending parties brought the case
(that is the body) before the Duke for judgment.[13] His Grace
insisted that the soul should be put back into its mortal envelope,
and he would then decide according to the action of the sacristan. The
ardour of the resuscitated monk seems to have been sufficiently cooled
by his involuntary bath in Robec, and he hurried back to his lonely
bed in the Abbey of St. Ouen, and at the Duke's command confessed his
wickedness to the abbot. But his escapade remains enshrined in a
proverb that lasted well into the sixteenth century, and is given by
Wace in its original form:

"Sire Moine, suef alez
Al passer planche vus gardez."

[Footnote 13: Students of that invaluable vision of antiquity "Les
Contes Drolatiques" will remember that it was also before Duke Richard
that Tryballot, the lusty old ruffian known as "Vieulx Par-chemins,"
was brought up for judgment, and that the statue commemorating His
Grace's sympathetic verdict remained in Rouen till the modesty of the
English invaders removed it.]

In 996, the Fearless Duke himself gave up the ghost, after having
enlarged the Cathedral of Rouen, and given it new pavement.[14] His
son, another Richard, like him in name alone, succeeded, and in the
first year of the new reign, we hear of a peasant revolt that shows an
extraordinary foreshadowing of the changes that were to come after the
fateful thousandth year had passed. The keynote of the movement is
struck in the strange word used by Wace, that occurs now for the first
time in history:

"Asez tost oi Richard dire
Ke vilains _cumune_ faseient.