Then, for the first time, he perceived that the Conqueror--the mightiest of earth's warriors--was he from whom the voice proceeded, kneeling without state in the midst of his subjects, lords and vassals, to join in the late evening service of the church {xix}. CHAPTER XIX. AN INTERVIEW WITH THE CONQUEROR. The mighty Conqueror of England was the central figure of the age in which he lived--the greatest soldier of an age of soldiers, and not less statesman than warrior. Born to a life of warfare, the Conquest had been but the culminating point of a career spent in the tented field--but on that one event he staked his all. For had he been vanquished at Senlac there was no hope of flight; the English commanded the sea, while his suzerain of France, ever on the watch to regain those Norman dominions which Rollo had won, would have taken instant advantage of the loss of its military leaders to re-annex Normandy to the French crown, and must have succeeded. Had William fallen in England the Norman name and glory would have perished at Hastings. Doubtless, he felt how great was the stake he had placed at the hazard of the die, and having won it, he used it as his own. Yet he was not all of stone. The Anglo-Saxon chronicler says of him--"He was mild to those good men who loved God, although stern beyond measure to those who resisted his will." Hence the power which men like Lanfranc or Anselm had over him; and it must be added that his life was exemplary as a private individual, his honour unsullied, his purity unstained. Stern was the race of which he was the head and the ruling spirit. Well does the old chronicler, Henry of Huntingdon, say: "God had chosen the Normans to humble the English nation, because He perceived that they were more fierce than any other people." And we modern English must remember that we are the descendants of old English and Normans combined. They came to "high mettle" the blood of our race, and when the conquerors and the conquered were moulded into one people, the result was the Englishmen who won Crecy and Agincourt against overwhelming odds, whose very name was a terror to continental soldiery, as Froissart abundantly testifies. Grieve as we may over the tyranny and wrong of the Conquest, England would never have been so great without it as she afterwards became. Etienne knelt in the abbey chapel until the last worshippers had gone out, when a hand was laid upon his shoulder, and a gentle voice said: "The King awaits thee, my son, in the abbot's audience chamber." In spite of his boldness, Etienne felt a strange tremor as he passed through the cloisters and approached the dreaded monarch. But he himself belonged to the same stern race, and when the folding doors opened, and he saw the King seated in the abbot's chair, he had perfectly recovered his composure. With winning grace he bent the knee before his liege, and gazed into that face whose frown was death.