Page:The Normans in European History.djvu/28

14 himself very likely of Norman origin, describes this cunning and revengeful race, despising their own inheritance in the hope of winning a greater elsewhere, eager for gain and eager for power, quick to imitate whatever they see, at once lavish and greedy; given to hunting and hawking and delighting in horses and accoutrements and fine clothing, yet ready when occasion demands to bear labor and hunger and cold; skilful in flattery and the use of fine words, but unbridled unless held down firmly by the yoke of justice. Turn then to the northern writers of the following century: William of Malmesbury, who describes the fierce onslaughts of the Normans, inured to war and scarcely able to live without it, their stratagems and breaches of faith and their envy of both equals and superiors; or the English monk Ordericus, who spent his life among them in Normandy and who says:—

A little later it is the Norman poet Wace who tells, through the mouth of the dying William the