xe required,
could he have pretended, despite a physical strength superior even to
Harold's, to rival blows that seemed to him more than mortal.

"Lives there any other man in the wide world whose arm could have wrought
that feat?" exclaimed Bruse, the ancestor of the famous Scot.

"Nay," said Harold, simply, "at least thirty thousand such men have I
left at home! But this was but the stroke of an idle vanity, and
strength becomes tenfold in a good cause."

The Duke heard, and fearful lest he should betray his sense of the latent
meaning couched under his guest's words, he hastily muttered forth
reluctant compliment and praise; while Fitzosborne, De Bohun, and other
chiefs more genuinely knightly, gave way to unrestrained admiration.

Then beckoning De Graville to follow him, the Duke strode off towards the
tent of his brother of Bayeux, who, though, except on extraordinary
occasions, he did not join in positive conflict, usually accompanied
William in his military excursions, both to bless the host, and to advise
(for his martial science was considerable) the council of war.

The bishop, who, despite the sanctimony of the Court, and his own stern
nature, was (though secretly and decorously) a gallant of great success
in other fields than those of Mars [196], sate alone in his pavilion,
inditing an epistle to a certain fair dame in Rouen, whom he had
unwillingly left to follow his brother. At the entrance of William,
whose morals in such matters were pure and rigid, he swept the letter
into the chest of relics which always accompanied him, and rose, saying,
indifferently:

"A treatise on the authenticity of St. Thomas's little finger! But what
ails you? you are disturbed!"

"Odo, Odo, this man baffles me--this man fools me; I make no ground with
him. I have spent--heaven knows what I have spent," said the Duke,
sighing with penitent parsimony, "in banquets, and ceremonies, and
processions; to say nothing of my bel maneir of Yonne, and the sum wrung
from my coffers by that greedy Ponthevin. All gone--all wasted--all
melted like snow! and the Saxon is as Saxon as if he had seen neither
Norman splendour, nor been released from the danger by Norman treasure.
But, by the splendour Divine, I were fool indeed if I suffered him to
return home. Would thou hadst seen the sorcerer cleave my helmet and
mail just now, as easily as if they had been willow twigs. Oh, Odo, Odo,
my soul is troubled, and St. Michael forsake