"It was the custom," says William of Malmesbury, "at the places where the king sojourned, for divine service to be stopped; and, as soon as he was moving away, all the bells began to peal.

And then Philip would cry, as he laughed like one beside himself, 'Dost hear, my love, how they are ringing us out ?'" At last, in 1104, the Bishop of Chartres himself, wearied by the persistency of the king and by sight of the trouble in which the prolongation of the interdict was plunging the kingdom, wrote to the Pope, Pascal II., "I do not presume to offer you advice; I only desire to warn you that it were well to show for a while some condescension towards the weaknesses of the man, so far as consideration for his salvation may permit, and to rescue the country from the critical state to which it is reduced by the excommunication of this prince." The Pope, consequently, sent instructions to the bishops of the realm; and they, at the king's summons, met at Paris on the 1st of December, 1104.

One of them, Lambert, bishop of Arras, wrote to the Pope, "We sent as a deputation to the king the bishops John of Orleans and Galon of Paris, charged to demand of him whether he would conform to the clauses and conditions set forth in your letters, and whether he were determined to give up the unlawful intercourse which had made him guilty before God.

The king, having answered, without being disconcerted, that he was ready to make atonement to God and the holy Roman Church, was introduced to the assembly.

He came barefooted, in a posture of devotion and humility, confessing his sin and promising to purge him of his excommunication by expiatory deeds.