This is not all; it were strange, looking round this disordered
royalty of England--a childless king, who loves thee better than his
own blood; a divided nobility, already adopting the fashions of the
stranger, and accustomed to shift their faith from Saxon to Dane, and
Dane to Saxon; a people that has respect indeed for brave chiefs, but,
seeing new men rise daily from new houses, has no reverence for
ancient lines and hereditary names; with a vast mass of villeins or
slaves that have no interest in the land or its rulers; strange,
seeing all this, if thy day-dreams have not also beheld a Norman
sovereign on the throne of Saxon England. And thy marriage with the
descendant of the best and most beloved prince that ever ruled these
realms, if it does not give thee a title to the land, may help to
conciliate its affections, and to fix thy posterity in the halls of
their mother's kin. Have I said eno' to prove why, for the sake of
nations, it were wise for the pontiff to stretch the harsh girths of
the law? why I might be enabled to prove to the Court of Rome the
policy of conciliating the love, and strengthening the hands, of the
Norman Count, who may so become the main prop of Christendom? Yea,
have I said eno' to prove that the humble clerk can look on mundane
matters with the eye of a man who can make small states great?"

William remained speechless--his hot blood thrilled with a half
superstitious awe; so thoroughly had this obscure Lombard divined,
detailed all the intricate meshes of that policy with which he himself
had interwoven his pertinacious affection for the Flemish princess,
that it seemed to him as if he listened to the echo of his own heart,
or heard from a soothsayer the voice of his most secret thoughts.

The priest continued