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Beautrelet turned the pages of history at haphazard: it was Rolf, or Rou, or Rollo, first Duke of Normandy, who was master of the secret of the Needle, according to the treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte! It was William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy and King of England, whose bannerstaff was pierced like a needle! It was at Rouen that the English burnt Joan of Arc, mistress of the secret!
When war dismays my barons bold, 'tis time for war to cease; When Heaven forsakes my pious monks, the will of Heaven is peace. Go forth, my monks, with mass and rood the Norman camp unto, And to the fold, with shepherd crook, entice this grisly Rou."
Psalm-chanting came the shaven monks, within the camp of dread; Amidst his warriors, Norman Rou stood taller by the head. Out spoke the Frank Archbishop then, a priest devout and sage, "When peace and plenty wait thy word, what need of war and rage? Why waste a land as fair as aught beneath the arch of blue, Which might be thine to sow and reap?" Thus saith the King to Rou.
The maternal uncle of Jeinal, who, on account of his father's infirmities, had been some time regent, and had deprived him of the succession to the throne, was also king of Aru or Rou, a country not far distant, and thus became monarch of both places.
Less than a century after William of Jumiege, a Norman poet, Robert Wace, told the same story in his Romance of Rou, a history in verse of Rollo and the first dukes of Normandy: "The lords do us nought but ill," he makes the Norman peasants say: with them we have nor gain nor profit from our labors; every day is for us a day of suffering, of travail, and of fatigue; every day our beasts are taken from us for forced labor and services . . . why put up with all this evil, and why not get quit of travail?
To Charles the king, the mitred monks, the mailed barons flew, While, shaking earth, behind them strode the thunder march of Rou. "O King," then cried those barons bold, "in vain are mace and mail, We fall before the Norman axe, as corn before the hail." "And vainly," cried the pious monks, "by Mary's shrine we kneel, For prayers, like arrows, glance aside, against the Norman teel."
Go and prepare all my faithful lords for a council, nobler than ever yet stirred the hearts and strung the hands of the sons of Rou." Brief was the sojourn of Tostig at the court of Rouen; speedily made the contract between the grasping Duke and the revengeful traitor. All that had been promised to Harold, was now pledged to Tostig if the last would assist the Norman to the English throne.
For the Sarrasins could but come up slowly, and one, discomfited at the summit, would roll back and carry with him many that were clambering up below him. But already some thirty were on the rampart, or in preparation to spring. And our men had been affrighted and fled, had not Hugo, with his "Rou! Rou!" loud upraised, relighted their failing courage.
So back he strode and thus he spoke, to that Archbishop meek: "I take the land thy king bestows from Eure to Michael-peak, I take the maid, or foul or fair, a bargain with the toast, And for thy creed, a sea-king's gods are those that give the most. So hie thee back, and tell thy chief to make his proffer true, And he shall find a docile son, and ye a saint in Rou."
Robert Wace, the Norman poet, who presented his "Roman de Rou" to our Henry II., is the most picturesque and animated of the old writers; and from him we can obtain a more vivid and full description of the conflict, than even the most brilliant romance-writer of the present time can supply.
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