l bold
activity, dispersed at once the vapors of this conspiracy. The heads
were punished. The rest, left under the shade of a dubious mercy, were
awed into obedience. His glory was, however, sullied by his putting to
death Waltheof, who had discovered the conspiracy; but he thought the
desire the rebels had shown of engaging him in their designs
demonstrated sufficiently that Waltheof still retained a dangerous
power. For as the years, so the suspicions, of this politic prince
increased,--at whose time of life generosity begins to appear no more
than a splendid weakness.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1079]

These troubles were hardly appeased, when others began to break forth in
his own family, which neither his glory, nor the terror which held a
great nation in chains, could preserve in obedience to him. To remove in
some measure the jealousy of the court of France with regard to his
invasion of England, he had promised upon his acquisition of that
kingdom to invest his eldest son, Robert, with the Duchy of Normandy.
But as his new acquisition did not seem so secure as it was great and
magnificent, he was far from any thoughts of resigning his hereditary
dominions, which he justly considered as a great instrument in
maintaining his conquests, and a necessary retreat, if he should be
deprived of them by the fortune of war. So long as the state of his
affairs in England appeared unsettled, Robert acquiesced in the
reasonableness of this conduct; but when he saw his father established
on his throne, and found himself growing old in an inglorious
subjection, he began first to murmur at the injustice of the king, soon
after to cabal with the Norman barons and at the court of France, and at
last openly rose in rebellion, and compelled the vassals of the Duchy to
do him homage. The king was not inclined to give up to force what he had
refused to reason. Unbroken with age, unwearied with so many
expeditions, he passed again into Normandy, and pressed his son with the
vigor of a young warrior.

This war, which was carried on without anything decisive for some time,
ended by a very extraordinary and affecting incident. In one of those
skirmishes which were frequent according to the irregular mode of
warfare in those days, William and his son Robert, alike in a forward
and adventurous courage, plunged into the thickest of the fight, and
unknowingly encountered each other. But Robert, superior by fortune, or
by the vigor of his youth, wou