Perjurer, thou art accursed! On thee and on all who lift hand in thy
cause, rests the interdict of the Church. Thou art excommunicated
from the family of Christ. On thy land, with its peers and its
people, yea, to the beast in the field and the bird in the air, to the
seed as the sower, the harvest as the reaper, rests God's anathema!
The bull of the Vatican is in the tent of the Norman; the gonfanon of
St. Peter hallows yon armies to the service of Heaven. March on,
then: ye march as the Assyrian; and the angel of the Lord awaits ye on
the way!'"

At these words, which for the first time apprised the English leaders
that their king and kingdom were under the awful ban of
excommunication, the thegns and abbots gazed on each other aghast. A
visible shudder passed over the whole warlike conclave, save only
three, Harold, and Gurth, and Haco.

The King himself was so moved by indignation at the insolence of the
monk, and by scorn at the fulmen, which, resting not alone on his own
head, presumed to blast the liberties of a nation, that he strode
towards the speaker, and it is even said of him by the Norman
chroniclers, that he raised his hand as if to strike the denouncer to
the earth.

But Gurth interposed, and with his clear eye serenely shining with
virtuous passion, he stood betwixt monk and king.

"O thou," he exclaimed, "with the words of religion on thy lips, and
the devices of fraud in thy heart, hide thy front in thy cowl, and
slink back to thy master. Heard ye not, thegns and abbots, heard ye
not this bad, false man offer, as if for peace, and as with the desire