'Then, I ask, is it fitting and just that William the Bastard should refuse his sanction, when William Fitzosbern's son pleads for it, to the marriage of William Fitzosbern's daughter with a noble English earl?' Here he bowed to Ralph de Guader, who had risen and stood beside him. 'Is it not a threefold affront to the memory of my father, to me his son, and to my noble brother-in-law, the Earl of East Anglia?' Normans, Bretons, and Saxons joined in a howl of reprobation of William of Normandy's conduct, the Saxons delighting to find fault with the conqueror of their woeful land on any pretext, and boiling with wrath at wrongs of their own. If any dissented, their feeble voices were drowned in the outcry of indignation that stormed round the board. The cups were drained to the last drop. 'William is no rightful Duke of Normandy, still less doth it befit him to style himself a king,' cried a Norman noble. 'He was born in adultery, and God favours not the children of sinful parents.' 'And born of mean blood!' shouted another. 'Who was Arlète of Falaise, the tanner's daughter, that her son should be anointed king, even if he had been born in wedlock?' 'If a natural son might succeed to his father's honours,' said the Earl of Hereford, his face flushed with the success of his appeal, 'Nicholas, Abbé of St. Ouen, had been Duke of Normandy, for he was the son of Duke Robert's elder brother. As Nicholas was set aside on account of his birth, so should William be. Guy of Burgundy is the rightful heir!' 'Nobles and knights of Bretagne!' cried the bridegroom, less fiery than his Norman brother-in-law, but speaking with a calm impressive voice, and flinging out each syllable as if it were a challenge in itself, 'ye who have so faithfully supported me in this land, which is the land of my birth, but not of yours! Men of Guader and Montfort! ye too have shed your blood like water for the sake of this ill-born Norman, who had God's own laws against him, and what reward hath he given you? Lands wasted by the ravages of war, which when you have tilled he hath taken away again to bestow on those who were higher in his favour! Some of your number he hath put to death! Nay more! Bretagne still mourns her glorious Count Conan, whom he slew with the coward's weapon--poison!--as he poisoned Conan's father Alain before him!' A low growl of wrath, terrible to hear, answered this appeal. Many of the Bretons sprang from their seats and bent over the table, shouting accusations against William of Normandy; for Ralph's cool determination was inherited from his English father; the men of Lower Britain were characterised generally by the hot-headedness of their Welsh ancestors, which they inherited with their red hair and fiery blue eyes, and Ralph had roused them. 'Ay! he used that coward's weapon too on Walter and his wife Biota in Falaise!' cried a voice above the tumult.