Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/235

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without reason that we find the lord of the border-land spoken of by the fitting title of Marquess. From the death of the Conqueror onwards, through the reigns of Robert and William, till the day when Henry sent him to a life-long prison, Robert of Bellême fills in the history of Normandy and England a place alongside of their sovereigns.

With the inheritance of Mabel and William Talvas, their son and grandson was believed to have succeeded in full measure to the hereditary wickedness of their house. That house is spoken of as one at whose deeds dæmons themselves might shudder, and Robert himself bears in the traditions of his Cenomannian enemies the frightful surname which has been so unfairly transferred to the father of the Conqueror. His name lives in proverbs. In the land of Maine his abiding works are pointed to as the works of Robert the Devil. Elsewhere the "wonders of Robert of Bellême" became a familiar saying. That Robert was a man of no small natural gifts is plain; to the ordinary accomplishments of the Norman warrior he added a mastery of the more intellectual branches of the art of warfare. As the Cenomannian legend shows, he stood at the head of his age in the skill of the military engineer. Firm and daring, ready of wit and ready of speech, he had in him most of the qualities which might have made him great in that or in any other age. But, even in that age, he held a place by himself as a kind of in-*