De Bourgueville, who went to the spot and exerted his eloquence to check this last act of violence, witnessed the opening of the coffin. It contained the bones of the king, wrapped up in red taffety, and still in tolerable preservation; but nothing else. He collected them, with care, and consigned them to one of the monks of the abbeys who kept them in his chamber, till the Admiral de Châtillon entered Caen at the head of his mercenaries, on which occasion the whole abbey was plundered, and the monks put to flight, and the bones lost. "Sad doings, these," says De Bourgueville, "_et bien peu réformez!_"--He adds, that one of the thigh-bones was preserved by the Viscount of Falaise, who was there with him, and begged it from the rioters, and that this bone was longer by four fingers' breadth than that of a tall man. The bone thus preserved, was re-interred, after the cessation of the troubles: it is the same that is alluded to in the inscription, which also informs us that a monument was raised over it in 1642, but was removed in 1742, it being then considered as an incumbrance in the choir. With this detail I close my letter. The melancholy end of the Conqueror, the strange occurrences at his interment, the violation of his grave, the dispersion of his remains, and the demolition and final removal of his monument, are circumstances calculated to excite melancholy emotions in the mind of every one, whatever his condition in life. In all these events, the religious man traces the hand of retributive justice; the philosopher regards the nullity of sublunary grandeur; the historian finds matter for serious reflection; the poet for affecting narrative; the moralist for his tale; and the school-boy for his theme.--Ordericus Vitalis sums the whole up admirably. I should spoil his language were I to attempt to translate it; I give it you, therefore, in his own words:--"Non fictilem tragoediam venundo, non loquaci comoedia cachinnantibus parasitis faveo: sed studiosis lectoribus varios eventus veraciter intimo. Inter prospera patuerunt adversa, ut terrerentur terrigenarum corda. Rex quondam potens et bellicosus, multisque populis per plures Provincias metuendus, in area jacuit nudus, et a suis, quos genuerat vel aluerat, destitutus. Aere alieno in funebri cultu indiguit, ope gregarii pro sandapila et vespilionibus conducendis eguit, qui tot hactenus et superfluis opibus nimis abundavit. Secus incendium a formidolosis vectus est ad Basilicam, liberoque solo, qui tot urbibus et oppidis et vicis principatus est, caruit ad sepulturam. Arvina ventris ejus tot delectamentis enutrita cum dedecore patuit, et prudentes ac infrunitos, qualis sit gloria carnis, edocuit[79]." * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 76: _Anglo-Norman Antiquities_, p. 45.] [Footnote 77: See _Cotman's Architectural Antiquities of Normandy_, t. 24-33.]