great personal beauty, that "her mental qualities
were very far from corresponding with the charms of her person. Like all
other Normans, she was greedy of gold, ambitious, selfish, voluptuous,
and in an eminent degree prone to treachery."[I] This may stand for a
portrait of the whole Norman race. Nor does it detract from their
aristocratical spirit that they were ever fond of money, or from their
chivalrous spirit that they were faithless when they supposed treachery
would best promote their interests. Aristocracies are always
money-seekers, and often money-grubbers; and they plunder all whom they
have the power to spoil. _Alieni uppetens_ is ever their motto, but _sui
profusus_ does always go with it. The American slavocracy were the
aristocracy of this country, and they were far more "greedy of gold"
than ever "Yankees" have been. Treachery is common to the chivalrous
classes, and the history of chivalry is full of instances of its display
by men who claimed a monopoly of honor. Our Southern "chivalry" were
unfaithful to every compact they made, and it was their infidelity that
brought about their fall. The dangers that now threaten the country
exist only because the party vanquished in the late civil war are bent
upon breaking the terms on which they were admitted to mercy. They are
fond of calling themselves Normans, though we have not heard much of
their Norman origin since their Hastings went against them; but in
respect to treachery and cruelty, and disregard of the rights of the
poor and the helpless, they are the match of all the barons of Normandy.

The Normans were often cruel, and some of their modes of punishing their
defeated enemies--blinding them, and cutting off their feet and hands,
and inflicting on them the most degrading of mutilations--might lead one
to suppose they were of Eastern origin, were not such practices
traceable to the Northmen. These practices imply a grossness of mind
that is much at war with the common notion of the gentleness and
cultivation of the Norman nobles. They were noted for their craft, their
spirit of intrigue, and their readiness to get possession of the
property of others by any and all means. The most unscrupulous modern
devotee of Mammon would be ashamed of deeds that never disturbed the
placid egotism of men who considered themselves the flower of humanity
and the salt of the earth,--and whose estimate of themselves has seldom
been called in question. The fairer side