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That object a brother's wrongs would create from a brother's love, and three hundred ships would sail up the Seine to demand your captive, manned by warriors as hardy as those who wrested Neustria from King Charles." "Granted," said De Graville. "But William, who could cut off the hands and feet of his own subjects for an idle jest on his birth, could as easily put out the eyes of a captive foe.
He placed it with simple courtesy before his visitor, and leaning, himself, against the table, said, in the Norman tongue, which he spoke fluently: "It is no slight thanks that I owe to the Sire de Graville, that he hath undertaken voyage and journey on my behalf; but before you impart your news, I pray you to take rest and food."
Mallet de Graville, for it was he, shrugged his shoulders, and said, with an air of pity and contempt: "I would, friend Sexwolf, that thou couldst but see the houses we build to God and his saints in our Normandy; fabrics of stately stone, on the fairest sites.
"Wolnoth is almost wholly Norman," said the bishop, smiling; "Wolnoth is bound par-amours, to a certain fair Norman dame; and, I trow well, prefers her charms here to the thought of his return. But Haco, as thou knowest, is sullen and watchful." "So much the better companion for Harold now," said De Graville.
"They understand me not, poor languageless savages!" said Mallet de Graville, turning to the monk, who stood by with the lifted rood; "speak to them in their own jargon."
"With such pestilent notions," quoth the Sire de Graville, no longer keeping temper, "I do not wonder that our fathers of Norway and Daneland beat ye so easily. The love for things ancient creed, lineage, and name, is better steel against the stranger than your smiths ever welded."
Looking round him, he saw Mallet de Graville, who had remounted, and said, shortly: "Pardex, dear knight, we thought you already with St. Michael! joy, that you live yet to be an English earl. Look you, ride to Fitzosborne with the signal-word, 'Li Hardiz passent avant! Off, and quick." De Graville bowed, and darted across the plain.
The commander, De Graville, an old debauchee, with much wit and politeness, but obscene in conversation, lodged at the house, and brought to it a set of riotous and extravagant young men; officers in the guards and mousquetaires. The Commander de Nonant, chevalier to all the girls of the opera, was the daily oracle, who conveyed to us the news of this motley crew.
I have journeyed since daybreak, and am now hungered and faint." "Alack, alack!" cried the abbot, plaintively, "thou knowest little, my son, what hardships we endure in these parts, how larded our larders, and how nefarious our fare. The flesh of swine salted " "The flesh of Beelzebub," cried Mallet de Graville, aghast.
"A Saxon peasant," said De Graville, "told me that the ground was called Senlac or Sanglac, or some such name, in their musicless jargon." "Grammercy!" quoth Grantmesnil, "methinks the name will be familiar eno' hereafter; no jargon seemeth the sound to my ear a significant name and ominous, Sanglac, Sanguelac the Lake of Blood."
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