Roman General--that--that on the whole he is willing to make the
amende honorable, as far as is consistent with the feelings of a
nobleman; and trusts that the saint, being a nobleman too, will be
satisfied therewith.

After which, probably, it will appear to the wild king that this
bishop is the very man that he wants, the very opposite to himself
and his wild riders; a man pure, peaceable, just, and brave;
possessed, too, of boundless learning; who can read, write, cipher,
and cast nativities; who has a whole room full of books and
parchments, and a map of the whole world; who can talk Latin, and
perhaps Greek, as well as one of those accursed man-eating Grendels,
a Roman lawyer, or a logothete from Ravenna; possessed, too, of
boundless supernatural power;--Would the bishop be so good as to help
him in his dispute with the Count Boso, about their respective
marches in such and such a forest? If the bishop could only settle
that without more fighting, of course he should have his reward. He
would confirm to the saint and his burg all the rights granted by
Constantine the Kaiser; and give him moreover all the meadow land in
such and such a place, with the mills and fisheries, on service of a
dish of trout from the bishop and his successors, whenever he came
that way: for the trout there were exceeding good, that he knew.
And so a bargain would be struck, and one of those curious
compromises between the spiritual and temporal authorities take root,
of which one may read at length in the pages of M. Guizot, or Sir
James Stephen.

And after a few years, most probably, the king would express a wish
to be baptized, at the instance of his queen who had been won over by
the bishop, and had gone down into the font some years before; and he