deux chevaux en bride, on pourrait croire enfin que c’est le Connetable, dont les titres de l’Abbaie de Facan nous ont appris le nom:  Signum Turoldi Constabularii.  Mais le Nain est tres-mal habille, il a son bonnet sur la tete, et tourne le dos au Comte de Ponthieu, pendant que les deux Ambassadeurs noblement vetus regardent ce Prince en face, et lui parlent decouverts:  trois circonstances qui ne peuvent convenir, ni au Connetable du Duc, ni a toute autre personne de distinction qui auroit tenu compagnie, ou fait cortege aux Ambassadeurs.”]

[Footnote 56:  This tower is figured, but very inaccurately, by Gough, in his Alien Priories, I. p. 22.—­The cupola which then surmounted it is now gone; and the cap to the turret, which served as the staircase, has strangely changed its shape.]

[Footnote 57:  Alien Priories, I. p. 24.]

[Footnote 58:  “Nam antea, sub tempore sex ducum vix ullus Normannorum liberalibus studiis adhaesit; nec doctor inveniebatur, donec provisor omnium, Deus, Normannicis oris Lanfrancum appulit.  Fama peritiae illius in tota ubertim innotuit Europa, unde ad magisterium ejus multi convenerunt de Francia, de Wasconia, de Britannia, necne Flandria.”—­Duchesne, Scriptores Normanni, p. 519.]

[Footnote 59:  A question always existed, whether the Empress was really buried here, or at the abbey of Ste Marie des Pres, at Rouen.  Hoveden expressly says, that she was interred at Rouen:  the chronicle of Bec, on the other hand, is equally positive in the assertion that her body was brought to Bec, and entombed with honor before the altar of the Virgin.  The same chronicle adds that, in the year 1273, her remains were discovered before the high altar, sewed up in an ox’s hide.—­Still farther to substantiate their claim, the monks of Bec maintained that, in 1684, upon the occasion of some repairs being done to this altar, the bones of the empress were again found immediately under the lamp (which, in Catholic churches, is kept constantly burning before the holy sacrament,) and that they were deposited once more in the ground in a wooden chest, covered with lead.—­The Empress was a munificent endower of monasteries, and was at all times most liberal towards Bec.  William of Jumieges says, that it would be tedious to enumerate the presents she made to the abbey, but that the sight of them gave pleasure to those strangers who have seen the treasures of the most noble churches.  His remarks on this matter, and his account of her arguments with her father, on the subject of her choice of Bec, as a place of her interment, deserve to be transcribed.—­“Transiret illac hospes Graecus aut Arabs, voluptate traheretur eadem.  Credimus autem, et credere fas est, aequissimum judicem omnium non solum in futuro, verumetiam in praesenti seculo, illi centuplum redditurum, quod seruis suis manu sicut larga, ita devota gratanter impendit.  Ad remunerationem vero instantis temporis pertinere