Now turn your attention to the other chief actor in the scene. You know at a glance that he is a great man, and that he is destined to make history. He is a giant in stature; no man living but he can bend his mighty bow. Rough and hard has been his upbringing, and rough and hard is his temper. He, too, is of Viking blood. His ancestor was that fierce outlaw Rollo, so long of leg and so heavy of frame that no horse could carry him. This fierce and crafty Viking had wrested a province from the imbecile King of France, on condition of doing homage to the poor simpleton. But Rollo would bow the knee to none save the rugged gods of his fierce Northern creed, nor would any of his chieftains so demean themselves. A common soldier was Rollo’s deputy, and even he disdained to bow, but seized the foot of the king and in bringing it to his mouth jerked the poor monarch off his throne! Rollo lives again in William, this mighty Norman duke at whom you are now gazing. His father’s nature is well set forth in the nickname which his followers gave him—Robert the Devil. William’s mother was a tanner’s daughter, and his haughty nobles once sneered at his base origin. They dare not do so now, for they know full well the weight of his mighty arm. As a boy he was heir to the most turbulent dukedom in Europe, but while in his teens he curbed the wild lawlessness of the barons and put a hook in their proud nostrils. Full well they remember the fate of those townsmen of Alençon who insulted his mother’s memory by hanging hides from their walls as a fitting welcome to “the tanner.” They will not soon forget how, in his wrath, he lopped off the feet and hands of his prisoners, and bade his slingers hurl the ghastly trophies into the town. Watchful, patient, cunning, ruthless, yet withal clear and sure of vision, he stands before you as by far the greatest warrior and statesman of his time. What manner of man this masterful Norman duke is, you may learn from the story of his wooing. He did not seek his wife with smiles and honeyed words, nor did he deign to display his best graces to win her heart. That is not his way. When Matilda, daughter of the Earl of Flanders, rejected his suit, both on account of his birth and because she loved another, he was not daunted—not he. He waited for her in the streets of Bruges, and forthwith rolled her in the dirt and soundly cuffed her ears. Strange to say, his new mode of wooing was successful. Matilda went home, changed her attire, put ointment on her bruises, and when next her lover presented himself declared that “the marriage pleased her well.”