The latter part of this story accords but ill with what De Bourgueville relates.  We learn from this author, that four hundred and thirty years subsequent to the death of the Conqueror, a Roman cardinal, attended by an archbishop and bishop, visited the town of Caen, and that his eminence having expressed a wish to see the body of the duke, the monks yielded to his curiosity, the tomb was opened, and the corpse discovered in so perfect a state that the cardinal caused a portrait to be taken from the lifeless features.  It is not worth while now to inquire into the truth of this story, or the fidelity of the resemblance.  The painting has disappeared in the course of time:  it hung for awhile against the walls of the church, opposite to the monument, but it was stolen during the tumults caused by the Huguenots, and was broken into two pieces, in which state De Bourgueville saw it a few years afterwards, in the hands of a Calvinist, one Peter Hode, the gaoler at Caen, who used it in the double capacity of a table and a door.  The worthy magistrate states, that he kept the picture, “because the abbey-church was demolished.”

He was himself present at the second violation of the royal tomb, in 1572; and he gives a piteous account of the transaction.  The monument raised to the memory of the Conqueror, by his son.  William Rufus, under the superintendance of Lanfrane, was a production of much costly and elaborate workmanship; the shrine, which was placed upon the mausoleum, glittered with gold and silver and precious stones.  To complete the whole, the effigy of the king had been added to the tomb at some period subsequent to its original erection.  A monument like this naturally excited the rapacity of a lawless banditti, unrestrained by civil or military force, and inveterate against every thing that might be regarded as connected with the Catholic worship.  The Calvinists were masters of Caen, and, incited by the information of what had taken place at Rouen, they resolved to repeat the same outrages.  Under the specious pretext of abolishing idolatrous worship, they pillaged and ransacked every church and monastery:  they broke the windows and organs, destroyed the images, stole the ecclesiastical ornaments, sold the shrines, committed pulpits, chests, books, and whatever was combustible, to the fire; and finally, after having wreaked their vengeance upon every thing that could be made the object of it, they went boldly to the town-hall to demand the wages for their labours.  In the course of these outrages the tomb of the Conqueror at one abbey and that of Matilda, his queen, at the other, were demolished.  And this was not enough; but a few days afterwards, the same band returned, allured by the hopes of farther plunder.  They dug up the coffin:  the hollow stone rang to the strokes of their daggers:  the vibration proved that it was not filled by the corpse, and nothing more was wanting to seal its destruction.