The two gentlemen in question were excellent specimens of the Norman baron of the day, without, however, being heroes or geniuses, or in any particular--except perhaps for good temper and the lack of especial temptation toward evil--manifestly superior to others of their class, caste, and period. Neither of them was in any respect a tyrant, individually cruel, or intentionally an oppressor; but both were, as every one of us is at this day, used to look at things as we find them, through our own glasses, and to seek rather for what is the custom, than for what is right, and therefore ought to be; for what it suits us, and is permitted to us by law to do to others, than for what we should desire others to do unto us. Reckless of life themselves, brought up from their cradles to regard pain as a thing below consideration, and death as a thing to be risked daily, they were not like to pay much regard to the mere physical sufferings of others, or to set human life at a value, such as to render it worth the preserving, when great stakes were to be won or lost on its hazard. Accustomed to set their own lives on the die, for the most fantastic whim of honor, or at the first call of their feudal suzerains, accustomed to see their Norman vassals fall under shield, and deem such death honorable and joyous, at their own slightest bidding, how should they have thought much of the life, far more of the physical or mental sufferings, of the Saxon serf, whom they had found, on their arrival in their newly-conquered England, a thing debased below the value, in current coin, of an ox, a dog, or a war-horse--a thing, the taking of whose life was compensated by a trivial fine, and whom they naturally came to regard as a dull, soulless, inanimate, stupid senseless animal, with the passions only, but without the intellect of the man. Of the two barons, Sir Yvo de Taillebois was the superior, both in intellect and culture; he was in easy circumstances also, while his far younger friend, Sir Philip de Morville, was embarrassed by the _res angusta domi_, and by the importunity of relentless creditors, which often drives men to do, as well as to suffer, extremes.