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Mallet's squire, with a change of raiment, and goodly coffers of soaps, unguents, and odours, took his way to the knight, for a Norman of birth was accustomed to much personal attendance, and had all respect for the body; and it was nearly an hour before, in long gown of fur, reshaven, dainty, and decked, the Sire de Graville bowed, and sighed, and prayed before the refection set out in the abbot's cell.
"And it please you, my lord," said De Graville, "I know this gentle thegn, and will beg of you the grace to see to his entertainment, and sustain his spirits." "Thou shalt, but later; so noble a guest none but my chief seneschal should be the first to honour." As the Saxon sullenly withdrew, and as the door closed on him, William rose and strode to and fro the room exultingly. "I have him!
The reply of wrath and defiance that rose to Harold's lip, was checked by a sign from De Graville, who raised his finger to his lip with a face expressive of caution and alarm; and, some little time after, as they halted to water their horses, De Graville came up to him and said in a low voice, and in Saxon: "Beware how you speak too frankly to Odo.
"Well spoken, and better than I reckoned on," said Sexwolf, heartily. While De Graville, alighting, sauntered about the village, the rest of the troop exchanged greetings with their countrymen. It was, even to the warrior's eye, a mournful scene.
"Dainty sir," said one of those Norman knights, William Mallet, of the house of Mallet de Graville , as he moved as far from the gigantic intruder as the space on the settle would permit, "forgive the observation that you have damaged my mantle, you have grazed my foot, and you have drunk my wine.
"Friendly Sir," said the Sire de Graville, seeking to subdue the tone of irony habitual to him, and acquired, perhaps, from his maternal ancestry, the Franks.
Then examining the young Norman with a look of rough compassion, he laid his large hand upon the knight's shoulder and whispered: "Take my advice and fly." "Fly!" said De Graville, reddening. "Is it to fly, think you, that I have put on my mail, and girded my sword?" "Vain vain! Wasps are fierce, but the swarm is doomed when the straw is kindled.
I could win those heights, as I have won heights as cloudcapt, but with fearful loss of my own troops, and the massacre of every foe. Both I would spare, if I may." "Yet thou hast not shown such value for life, in the solitudes I passed," said the knight bluntly. Harold turned pale, but said firmly, "Sire de Graville, a stern thing is duty, and resistless is its voice.
"Choose whom thou wilt, Harold," said one of the young thegns, laughing, "but spare thy friends; and whomsoever thou choosest, pay his widow the weregeld." "Fair sirs," then said De Graville, "if ye think that I, though a stranger, could serve you as nuncius, it would be a pleasure to me to undertake this mission.
Nor should the critic in question, when inviting his readers to condemn me for making Mallet de Graville quote Horace, have omitted to state that de Graville expressly laments that he had never read, nor could even procure, a copy of the Roman poet judging only of the merits of Horace by an extract in some monkish author, who was equally likely to have picked up his quotation second-hand.
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