They came to the river Couesnon.  Harold must have got great fame by saving life on the sands, to be remembered and recorded by the Normans themselves after they had killed him; but this is the affair of historians.  Tourists note only that Harold and William came to the Mount:—­“Venerunt ad Montem.”  They would never have dared to pass it, on such an errand, without stopping to ask the help of Saint Michael.

If William and Harold came to the Mount, they certainly dined or supped in the old refectory, which is where we have lain in wait for them.  Where Duke William was, his jongleur—­jugleor—­was not far, and Wace knew, as every one in Normandy seemed to know, who this favourite was,—­his name, his character, and his song.  To him Wace owed one of the most famous passages in his story of the assault at Hastings, where Duke William and his battle began their advance against the English lines:—­

Taillefer qui mult bien chantout
 Sor un cheval qui tost alout
 Devant le duc alout chantant
 De Karlemaigne e de Rollant
 E d’Oliver e des vassals
 Qui morurent en Rencevals. 
 Quant il orent chevalchie tant
 Qu’as Engleis vindrent apreismant: 
 “Sire,” dist Taillefer, “merci! 
 Io vos ai longuement servi. 
 Tot mon servise me devez. 
 Hui se vos plaist le me rendez. 
 Por tot guerredon vos require
 E si vos veil forment preier
 Otreiez mei que io ni faille
 Le premier colp de la bataille.” 
 Li dus respondi:  “Io l’otrei.”

Taillefer who was famed for song,
 Mounted on a charger strong,
 Rode on before the Duke, and sang
 Of Roland and of Charlemagne,
 Oliver and the vassals all
 Who fell in fight at Roncesvals. 
 When they had ridden till they saw
 The English battle close before: 
 “Sire,” said Taillefer, “a grace! 
 I have served you long and well;
 All reward you owe me still;
 To-day repay me if you please. 
 For all guerdon I require,
 And ask of you in formal prayer,
 Grant to me as mine of right
 The first blow struck in the fight.” 
 The Duke answered:  “I grant.”

Of course, critics doubt the story, as they very properly doubt everything.  They maintain that the “Chanson de Roland” was not as old as the battle of Hastings, and certainly Wace gave no sufficient proof of it.  Poetry was not usually written to prove facts.  Wace wrote a hundred years after the battle of Hastings.  One is not morally required to be pedantic to the point of knowing more than Wace knew, but the feeling of scepticism, before so serious a monument as Mont-Saint-Michel, is annoying.  The “Chanson de Roland” ought not to be trifled with, at least by tourists in search of art.  One is shocked at the possibility of being deceived about the starting-point of American genealogy.  Taillefer and the song rest on the same evidence that Duke William and Harold and the battle itself rest upon, and to doubt the “Chanson” is to call the very roll of Battle Abbey in question.  The whole fabric of society totters; the British peerage turns pale.