Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/255

 *



gave Robert a lecture on the good government of his duchy, on the duty of defending the oppressed and putting down their oppressors. A long list of princes are held up as his examples, the familiar heroes of Persia, Macedonia, Carthage, and Rome, among whom, one hardly sees why, Septimius Severus takes his place along with the first Cæsar. On the same list too come the princes of his own house, the princes whom the warlike French had ever feared, winding up with the name of his own father, greatest of them all. In all this we hear the monk of Saint Evroul rather than the Bishop of Bayeux; but any voice is worth hearing which impresses on us a clearer understanding of the abiding jealousy between Normandy and France. But we may surely hear Odo himself in the practical advice that follows. Now is the time to root out the whole accursed stock of Talvas from the Norman duchy. They were an evil generation from the beginning, not one of whom ever died the death of other men. It is as the son of Mabel, not as the son of Roger, that Robert of Bellême comes in for this frightful inheritance, and Odo could not foresee how pious an end the Earl of Shrewsbury was to make in a few years. He reminded the Duke that a crowd of castles, which had been ducal possessions as long as his father lived, had been seized on his father's death by Robert of Bellême, and their ducal garrisons driven out. It was the