[Harold<br> Complete by Edward Bulwer-Lytton]@TWC D-Link book
Harold
Complete

CHAPTER V
2/3

The scene was fair; the sun, towards its decline, glittered on numerous small pleasure-boats, which shot to and fro between Westminster and London or towards the opposite shores of Lambeth.

His eye sought eagerly, along the curves of the river, the grey remains of the fabled Tower of Julius, and the walls, gates, and turrets, that rose by the stream, or above the dense mass of silent roofs; then it strained hard to descry the tops of the more distant masts of the infant navy, fostered under Alfred, the far-seeing, for the future civilisation of wastes unknown, and the empire of seas untracked.
The Duke breathed hard, and opened and closed the hand which he stretched forth into space as if to grasp the city he beheld.

"Rolf," said he, abruptly, "thou knowest, no doubt, the wealth of the London traders, one and all; for, foi de Gaillaume, my gentil chevalier, thou art a true Norman, and scentest the smell of gold as a hound the boar!" Rolf smiled, as if pleased with a compliment which simpler men might have deemed, at the best, equivocal, and replied: "It is true, my liege; and gramercy, the air of England sharpens the scent; for in this villein and motley country, made up of all races,--Saxon and Fin, Dane and Fleming, Pict and Walloon,--it is not as with us, where the brave man and the pure descent are held chief in honour: here, gold and land are, in truth, name and lordship; even their popular name for their national assembly of the Witan is, 'The Wealthy.' [50] He who is but a ceorl to-day, let him be rich, and he may be earl to-morrow, marry in king's blood, and rule armies under a gonfanon statelier than a king's; while he whose fathers were ealdermen and princes, if, by force or by fraud, by waste or by largess, he become poor, falls at once into contempt, and out of his state,--sinks into a class they call 'six-hundred men,' in their barbarous tongue, and his children will probably sink still lower, into ceorls.

Wherefore gold is the thing here most coveted; and by St.Michael, the sin is infectious." William listened to the speech with close attention.

"Good," said he, rubbing slowly the palm of his right hand over the back of the left; "a land all compact with the power of one race, a race of conquering men, as our fathers were, whom nought but cowardice or treason can degrade,--such a land, O Rolf of Hereford, it were hard indeed to subjugate, or decoy, or tame--" "So has my lord the Duke found the Bretons; and so also do I find the Welch upon my marches of Hereford." "But," continued William, not heeding the interruption, "where wealth is more than blood and race, chiefs may be bribed or menaced; and the multitude--by'r Lady, the multitude are the same in all lands, mighty under valiant and faithful leaders, powerless as sheep without them.


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