:

"If it be a sin, as the priests say, to pierce the dark walls which
surround us here, and read the future in the dim world beyond, why gavest
thou, O Heaven, the reason, ever resting, save when it explores? Why
hast thou set in the heart the mystic Law of Desire, ever toiling to the
High, ever grasping at the Far?"

Heaven answered not the unquiet soul. The clouds passed to and fro in
their wanderings, the wind still sighed through the hollow stones, the
fire shot with vain sparks towards the distant stars. In the cloud and
the wind and the fire couldst thou read no answer from Heaven, unquiet
soul?

The next day, with a gallant company, the falcon on his wrist [186], the
sprightly hound gamboling before his steed, blithe of heart and high in
hope, Earl Harold took his way to the Norman court.

BOOK IX.
THE BONES OF THE DEAD.

CHAPTER I.

William, Count of the Normans, sate in a fair chamber of his palace of
Rouen; and on the large table before him were ample evidences of the
various labours, as warrior, chief, thinker, and statesman, which filled
the capacious breadth of that sleepless mind.

There lay a plan of the new port of Cherbourg, and beside it an open MS.
of the Duke's favourite book, the Commentaries of Caesar, from which, it
is said, he borrowed some of the tactics of his own martial science;
marked, and dotted, and interlined with his large bold handwriting, were
the words of the great Roman. A score or so of long arrows, which had
received some skilful improvement in feather or bolt, lay carelessly
scattered over some architectural sketches of a new Abbey Church, and the
proposed charter for its endowment. An open cyst, of the beautiful
workmanship for which the English goldsmiths were then pre-eminently
renowned, that had been among the parting gifts of Edward, contained
letters from the various potentates near and far, who sought his alliance
or menaced his repose.

On a perch behind him sate his favourite Norway falcon unhooded, for it
had been taught the finest polish in its dainty education--viz., "to face
company undisturbed." At a kind of easel at the farther end of the hall,
a dwarf, misshapen in limbs, but of a face singularly acute and
intelligent, was employed in the outline of that famous action at Val des
Dunes, which had been the scene of one of the most brilliant of William's
feats in arms--an outline intended to be transferred to the notable
"stitchwork" of M