Norman

“ Fashioned and enriched by the hand of man, the land of Normandy has in turn profoundly influenced the character of its inhabitants. First and foremost, the Norman is a peasant, industrious, tenacious, cautious, secretive, distrustful of strangers, close-fisted, shrewd, even to the point of cunning, a hard man at a bargain, eager for gain, but with the genius for small affairs rather than for great, for labor and economy rather than enterprise and daring. ”

“ A good Norman is no Norman who has not a lawsuit on hand.
Anything will serve as a pretext for a quarrel No sum of money is so small as not to warrant a breaking of the closest blood ties, if thereby one's rights may be secured. Those beautiful stripes of rye, barley, corn, and wheat up yonder in the fields, that melt into one another like sea-tones—down here on the benches before the juge de paix—what quarrels, what hatreds, what evil passions these few acres of land have brought their owners, facing each other here like so many demons, ready to spring at the others' throats! ”

“ The droning Norman voices of the men on guard issued from an open door a few paces before him on the left. He caught a jest, the coarse chuckling laughter which attended it, and the gurgle of applause which followed; and he knew that at any moment one of the men might step out and discover him. ”

“ All the heroes of the fantastic adventure are Norman, or become Norman, or play their part in the Norman country.
What a fascinating procession through the ages! What a rousing spectacle was that of all those barons, dukes and kings, starting from such widely opposite points to meet in this particular corner of the world! Beautrelet turned the pages of history at haphazard: it was Rolf, or Rou, or Rollo, first Duke of Normandy, who was master of the secret of the Needle, according to the treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte! ”

“ The haughtier Normans, seeing that he bore his bettered fortunes as became a man, ready for either fortune, admitted him as one who had won his freedom bravely, and wore it as if it had been his from his birth—they muttered beneath their thick mustaches, that he deserved to be a Norman. ”

“ When that other man who called himself a king came here, it was with a measure of pomp and dignity. He had followers; he had the driving purpose of religious fanaticism, but when King Norman came, it was without the fervor of a pilgrim seeking new soil for his faith and deeds, without a follower except the shy little girl with the great blue eyes and blue-black hair, her face whitened by infancy spent in a convent school, and the sooty-faced ruffian in the fire-hole of the rickety tug which Eldred wheeled out of the straits himself—for that was all men called him when he came: Norman Eldred. ”

“ Let us therefore suffer the old Norman chronicler to transport our imaginations to the fair Sussex scenery, north-west of Hastings, with its breezy uplands, its grassy slopes, and ridges of open down swelling inland from the sparkling sea, its scattered copses, and its denser glades of intervening forests, clad in all the varied tints of autumn, as they appeared on the morning of the fourteenth of October, seven hundred and eighty-five years ago. The Norman host is pouring forth from its tents; and each troop, and each company, is forming fast under the banner of its leader. ”

“ Their bones lay white on every island in the fens; their corpses rotted on gallows beneath every Norman keep; their few survivors crawled into monasteries, with eyes picked out, or hands and feet cut off, or took to the wild wood as strong outlaws, like their successors and representatives, Robin Hood, Scarlet, and John, Adam Bell, and Clym of the Cleugh, and William of Cloudeslee. But they never really bent their necks to the Norman yoke; they kept alive in their hearts that proud spirit of personal independence, which they brought with them from the moors of Denmark and the dales of Norway ”

“ Tall, strong, striking, he caused his friends to admire in him the elder, the florid Norman type, and he seems himself, as a man of imagination, to have found some transmission of race in his stature and presence, his light-coloured salient eyes and long tawny moustache. ”

“ It was a pleasant surprise to find that, for once, a Norman blouse had told the truth; for here were the people of Coutances coming up from the fields to prove it. In all these narrow streets a great multitude of people were passing us; some were laden with vines, others with young forest trees, and still others with rude garlands of flowers. The peasant women's faces, as the bent figures staggered beneath a young fir-tree, were purple, but their smiles were as gay as the wild flowers with which the stones were thickly strewn. ”

“ Here was a land as wild as the Armorican forests in the old tales of chivalry and legends of monasticism—a virgin land of practical freedom, where new empires might be carved by the strong and willing hand, and new mines of knowledge laid open by the daring intellect. It was not money that the simple Norman thought of; it was excitement, adventure, vague possibilities, limitless solitudes where hermits and hunters might live and dream. To leave Normandy was not exile to him; to leave all those he loved was not separation ”

“ Here Sir Norman's litany of adjectives beginning to give out, he came to a sudden halt, with a face as radiant as the sky at sunrise.
“Ah! I did not believe them, when they told me she was so much like me; but if she is as near perfection as you describe, I shall begin to credit it. Strange, is it not, that nature should make a duplicate of her greatest earthly chef d'oeuvre?”
“You conceited young jackanapes!” growled Sir Norman, in deep displeasure. “It is far stranger how such a bundle of vanity can contrive to live in this work-a-day world. You are a foreigner, I perceive?” ”

“ Torfrida shook her head. To her, as to most foreigners, Wessex and the southeast counties were England; the most civilized; the most Norman; the seat of royalty; having all the prestige of law, and order, and wealth. And she was shrewd enough to see, that as it was the part of England which had most sympathy with Norman civilization, it was the very part where the Norman could most easily gain and keep his hold. ”

“ What a touch of humanity is there! The king never smiled afterward, but he plotted on and went his kingly ways, "the last of those great Norman kings who, with all their vices, their cruelty, and their lust, displayed great talents of organization and adaptation, guided England with a wise, if a strong, hand through the days of her youth, and by their instinctive, though selfish, love of order paved the way for the ultimate rise of a more stable, yet a freer government." ”

“ My little friend,” said Sir Norman, with bland suavity, and unconsciously quoting Leoline, “once seen in not easy to be-forgotten.”
Upon this, his highness net up such another screech of mirth that it quite woke an echo through the room; and all Sir Norman's friends looked grave; for when his highness laughed, it was a very bad sign.
“My little friend will hurt himself,” remarked Sir Norman, with an air of solicitude, “if he indulges in his exuberant and gleeful spirits to such an extent. Let me recommend you, as a well-wisher, to sit down and compose yourself.” ”

“ You see, Norman, it is just as I told you. All civilised people are just alike when they get into a drawing-room.”
“Harry takes large views of the Genus homo,” Norman exerted himself to say. “Being used to the black and brown species, he takes little heed of the lesser varieties.”
“It is enough for him that he does not furnish the entertainment in another way,” said Flora. “But, good-night. Meta, you look tired.” ”

“ The Norman women of the higher classes were already famous far and wide through Europe, and, since we are dealing with the fortunes of Normandy, we like to picture them in their castle-halls in all their dignity and authority, and to imagine their spirited faces, and the beauty which is always a power, and which some of them had learned already to make a power for good. ”

“ But the Norman, who was a soldier, a lawyer, a diplomatist, orator, hunter, horseman and trader, was also a successful cultivator of the soil, and the Norman agriculturist of to-day who reminds the tourist in his physical traits, hair, eyes, and complexion, and even in the intonations of his voice, of an English farmer of the Anglo-Norman type, bears a more striking resemblance to his English kinsman indeed than to his dark-visaged compatriot, the vigneron of Southern France. ”

“ To those of us who knew Norman intimately, the news of his death comes as a distinct shock, and every member of our class feels proud to have known and to have been affiliated with one who had the courage to give in such a noble way everything he possessed to the great cause in which he believed. ”

“ Into the great arches the sonorous chanting beat upon the ear with a rhythmic perfection that, even without the lovely flavor of its sweetness, would have made a beauty of its own. In this still and holy place, with the company of the stately Norman arches soaring aloft—beneath the sombre glory of the giant aisle—the austere simplicity of this chant made the heart beat, one knew not why, and the eyes moisten, one also knew not why. ”

“ The white hands removed the mask, and the floating coils of hair, and revealed, to Sir Norman's horror-struck gaze, the grisly face and head, and the hollow eye-sockets, the grinning mouth, and fleshless cheeks of a skeleton!
He saw it but for one fearful instant—the next, she had thrown up both arms, and leaped headlong into the loathly plague-pit. He saw her for a second or two, heaving and writhing in the putrid heap; and then the strong man reeled and fell with his face on the ground, not feigning, but sick unto death. ”

“ And then this extraordinary person, who united in himself all the types of an age that vanished for ever in his grave, and who is the more interesting, as in him we see the race from which the Norman sprang, began, in the rich full voice that pealed deep as an organ, to chaunt his impromptu war-song. ”

“ But, even with his own Normans, he had a restless life. They were always hungering and thirsting for the riches of the English; and the more he gave, the more they wanted. His priests were as greedy as his soldiers. We know of only one Norman who plainly told his master, the King, that he had come with him to England to do his duty as a faithful servant, and that property taken by force from other men had no charms for him. His name was Guilbert. We should not forget his name, for it is good to remember and to honor honest men. ”

“ Yet he was a Norman, and the Norman thinks before he acts. He is the soul of caution; he wants to get the best he can out of his bargain. He will throw nothing away that is to his advantage. There should be other ways than the gun with which to take a man's life—ways which might give a Norman a chance to sacrifice only one life ”

“ It was fearful to think of; but how many are daily and hourly borne, by the mighty tides of worldliness and sin, over a more tremendous precipice; and there are no cries or prayers of pitying love; no man careth for their souls!
Norman was very silent as he looked for the first time on that wondrous fall, the sight of which, he said, took away his strength. ”

“ Which marks the meanest of the Highland race;
Warm hearts that burn alike in weal and woe,
As if the north wind fanned their bosoms’ glow!
But wide unlike their souls: old Norman’s eye
Was proudly savage ev’n in courtesy.
His sinewy shoulders—each, though aged and lean,
Broad as the curled Herculean head between,
His scornful lip, his eyes of yellow fire,
And nostrils that dilated quick with ire. [265]
With ever downward-slanting shaggy brows,
Marked the old lion you would dread to rouse.
Norman, in truth, had led his earlier life
In raids of red revenge and feudal strife ”

“ Two traits of the Norman character impress the greatest of their contemporary historians, William of Malmesbury—the Norman love of battle and the Norman love of God. Upon these two ideas the history of the Middle Age turns. The crusader, the monk, the troubadour, the priest, the mystic, the dreamer and the saint, the wandering scholar and the scholastic philosopher, all derive thence. Chivalry is born. The knight beholds in his lady's face on earth the image of Our Lady in Heaven, the Virgin-Mother of the Redeemer of men. ”

“ Next, the Norman is scarcely more apprehensive than the Celt, but he is more constructive, and uses to good advantage what he learns from the Frank. His main characteristic is an energy, which never exhausts itself in vain anger, desire, or sorrow, but abides and rules, like a living rock:—where he wanders, he flows like lava, and congeals like granite. ”

“ This, perchance, is a hard task, since it calls on the slave to sing the praises of the master—upon the vanquished, while pressed by all the evils of conquest, to sing the praises of the conqueror. Yet I will name a Norman—the first in arms and in place—the best and the noblest of his race. And the lips that shall refuse to pledge me to his well-earned fame, I term false and dishonoured, and will so maintain them with my life.—I quaff this goblet to the health of Richard the Lion-hearted! ”

“ Sir Norman was in a very bad way, beyond doubt, but no worse than millions of young men before and after him; and he heaved a great many profound sighs, and drank a great many glasses of sack, and came to the sorrowful conclusion that Dame Fortune was a malicious jade, inclined to poke fun at his best affections, and make a shuttlecock of his heart for the rest of his life. ”