pe of appeasing an
avenging God, forbade private wars during certain periods in the
ecclesiastical year. Repentant barons, with a similar hope, made peace
with their neighbors, and their swords rusted as they built monasteries
and chapels; or some not yet obtaining peace, and perhaps restless with
their occupation gone, made pilgrimages to Rome, to pray at the graves
of Peter and Paul, and still others even to Jerusalem, that the breath
from Calvary might whiten their sin-steeped souls.

It is interesting to note that among these penitent pilgrims, sixty
years before the first Crusade, was that Duke of Normandy known as
"Robert the Devil," whose pagan ancestor only a century before had been
the terror of European civilization, and whose son, thirty years later,
was to wear the crown of England.

In this way were the currents setting steadily toward the Holy
Sepulchre as the panacea for human woes which were sent by an avenging
God. These were the first stirrings of the breath of the coming storm
which in eight successive waves was soon to sweep over Europe. The way
was preparing for the great event of the Middle Ages.

Whatever its motives, the abstaining from slaughter, and the building
of cathedrals and monasteries and abbeys, was weaving a mantle of
beauty for France, which she still proudly wears. And the greatest of
the builders was the Duke of Normandy; and it is to his dukedom the art
student turns for the most perfect blending of grace and grandeur,
characteristic of the early style. The marvel to which this is
intended to draw attention is the preeminent position swiftly attained
in France by this brilliant race, in every department of living. It
would seem that France did not adopt this terrible child from the
north, but that he adopted France, and changed and gave color to her
whole future. It was a tempestuous element, but it was new life, and
it is impossible to conceive of what that country would have been
without this stimulating, brilliant infusion into its national life.

With such marvellous facility did this people adopt the speech and
manners of their neighbors, that in the year 1066 they were prepared to
instruct the Britons in the ways of a more polished civilization. Only
a century before the birth of William the Conqueror, his ancestors had
lived by looting. They were highwaymen and robbers by profession. His
mother, a Norman peasant girl, daughter of a tanner, won the love of
that