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Even Mallet de Graville frowned at the sight of the sire's infirmity, even Turold the dwarf shook his head. William put down the boy, gave the brief order for the stranger's admission, and, punctilious in ceremonial, beckoning De Graville to follow him, passed at once into the next chamber, and seated himself on his chair of state.
"Dismiss us unheard!" repeated the punctilious Norman; "even this poor barbarous King can scarcely be so strange to all comely and gentle usage, as to put such insult on Guillaume Mallet de Graville.
Both these dignitaries, armed cap-a-pie, and spear in hand, headed the flight; and good service that day, both as guide and champion, did Mallet de Graville. He led them in a circuit behind both armies, but being intercepted by a new body, coming from the pastures of Hertfordshire to the help of Godwin, he was compelled to take the bold and desperate resort of entering the city gates.
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.
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.
"Does Monsieur le baron know," he said to Canalis in a low voice, "that Monsieur the grand equerry is coming to Graville to get cured of the same illness which has brought Monsieur de La Briere and Monsieur le baron to the sea-shore?" "What, the little Duc d'Herouville?" "Yes, monsieur." "Is he coming for Mademoiselle de La Bastie?" asked La Briere, coloring. "So it appears, monsieur."
While the wounded were tended, and the dead were cleared from the soil, Harold, with three of his chiefs, and Mallet de Graville, whose feats rendered it more than ungracious to refuse his request that he might assist in the council, conferred upon the means of terminating the war with the next day.
"And for the rest," interrupted the Sire de Graville, turning white with wrath, but speaking in a low repressed voice, "were it not that Duke William sate yonder, thou shouldst have six inches of cold steel in thy huge carcase to digest thy stolen dinner, and silence thy unmannerly tongue.
Doffing his helm with its long nose-piece, he caught the thegn's hand, and exclaimed: "Well met, ventre de Guillaume! well met, O Godree the debonnair! Thou rememberest Mallet de Graville, and in this unseemly guise, on foot, and with villeins, sweating under the eyes of plebeian Phoebus, thou beholdest that much-suffering man!"
Mallet de Graville, thy prayer is granted; to thy choice be consigned the place of burial, to thy care the funeral rites of him whose soul hath passed out of human judgment."
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