Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/356

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takes no notice of any visit to England, but which gives us a moving tale of Henry's experiences in Normandy and the neighbouring lands. It is one of those cases where a writer, telling his own part of the story, altogether forgets, perhaps without formally contradicting, other parts. In such a case he is likely to stumble in some of his dates and details; but this need not lead us altogether to cast aside the main features of his story. It is plain that, for some time after the surrender of the Mount, Henry was, to say the least, landless. In the pictures of his actual distress and adversity there may well be somewhat of exaggeration; but they draw from one who is not a flatterer the important remark that, having known adversity himself, he learned to be gracious in after years to the sufferings of others. We are perhaps startled by such a saying when we think of some particular acts of Henry; but this witness does not stand alone; and, among the contradictions of human nature, there is nothing impossible in the belief that such a spirit may have existed alongside of many particular acts of cruelty. But it is certain that Henry's season of adversity must have been shorter than it appears in the picture of it which is given to us. We are told that, soon after he left the Mount, he found himself very nearly a solitary wanderer. He first went into Britanny, the only land from which he had received any help, and thanked his friends there for their services. Thence he betook himself to France, and spent, we are told, nearly two years in the borderland of the Vexin, the land which had been the scene of his father's last and fatal warfare, and which