But the Norman people, as Abbot Milo says, 'slime-blooded, slow-bellies, are withal great eaters of beef, which breeds in them, as well as a heaviness of motion, a certain slumbrous rage very dangerous to mankind.

They crop grief after grief, chewing the cud of grievance; for when they are full of it they disgorge and regorge the abhorred sum, and have stuff for their spleens for many a year.' Even more than this smouldering nursed hate they love a punctilio; they walk by forms, whether the road is to a lady's heart or an enemy's throat.

And so Saint-Pol found, and so Des Barres, Frenchmen both and fiery young men, who shook their fists in the faces of the Gurduns and the dust of such blockish hospitallers off their feet, when they saw the course affairs were to run.

Gilles de Gurdun, if you will believe it, with the advice of his father and the countenance of his young brother Bartholomew, would not budge an inch towards the recovery of his wife or her ravisher's punishment until he had drawn out his injury fair on parchment.

This he then proposed to carry to his Duke, old King Henry.