atilda the Duchess.

Upon the floor, playing with a huge boar-hound of English breed, that
seemed but ill to like the play, and every now and then snarled and
showed his white teeth, was a young boy, with something of the Duke's
features, but with an expression more open and less sagacious; and
something of the Duke's broad build of chest and shoulder, but without
promise of the Duke's stately stature, which was needed to give grace and
dignity to a strength otherwise cumbrous and graceless. And indeed,
since William's visit to England, his athletic shape had lost much of its
youthful symmetry, though not yet deformed by that corpulence which was a
disease almost as rare in the Norman as the Spartan.

Nevertheless, what is a defect in the gladiator is often but a beauty in
the prince; and the Duke's large proportions filled the eye with a sense
both of regal majesty and physical power. His countenance, yet more than
his form, showed the work of time; the short dark hair was worn into
partial baldness at the temples by the habitual friction of the casque,
and the constant indulgence of wily stratagem and ambitious craft had
deepened the wrinkles round the plotting eye and the firm mouth: so that
it was only by an effort like that of an actor, that his aspect regained
the knightly and noble frankness it had once worn. The accomplished
prince was no longer, in truth, what the bold warrior had been,--he was
greater in state and less in soul. And already, despite all his grand
qualities as a ruler, his imperious nature had betrayed signs of what he
(whose constitutional sternness the Norman freemen, not without effort,
curbed into the limits of justice) might become, if wider scope were
afforded to his fiery passions and unsparing will.

Before the Duke, who was leaning his chin on his hand, stood Mallet de
Graville, speaking earnestly, and his discourse seemed both to interest
and please his lord.

"Eno'!" said William, "I comprehend the nature of the land and its
men,--a land that, untaught by experience, and persuaded that a peace of
twenty or thirty years must last till the crack of doom, neglects all its
defences, and has not one fort, save Dover, between the coast and the
capital,--a land which must be won or lost by a single battle, and men
(here the Duke hesitated,) and men," he resumed with a sigh, "whom it
will be so hard to conquer that, pardex, I don't wonder they neglect
their fortresses. Enough I say, of