Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/219

A.D. 1189.] found to wrap the body in a shroud, and convey it thither with horses. The corpse was lying in the great church of the abbey, waiting the time of sepulture, when Richard, who had received the news of his father's death, arrived at Fontevrault. Entering the church, he commanded the face of the dead king to be uncovered, that he might look upon it for the last time.



The features were still contracted, and bore upon them the impress of prolonged agony. The son gazed upon the sight in silence, and with a sadden impulse, he knelt down for a few moments before the altar; then, rising up, he quitted the church, not to return. An old superstition of Scandinavia, which had descended alike to Normans and Saxons, was to the effect that the body of a murdered man would bleed in the presence of the