All this preamble leads only to unite the “Chanson” with the architecture of the Mount, by means of Duke William and his Breton campaign of 1058.  The poem and the church are akin; they go together, and explain each other.  Their common trait is their military character, peculiar to the eleventh century.  The round arch is masculine.  The “Chanson” is so masculine that, in all its four thousand lines, the only Christian woman so much as mentioned was Alda, the sister of Oliver and the betrothed of Roland, to whom one stanza, exceedingly like a later insertion, was given, toward the end.  Never after the first crusade did any great poem rise to such heroism as to sustain itself without a heroine.  Even Dante attempted no such feat.

Duke William’s party, then, is to be considered as assembled at supper in the old refectory, in the year 1058, while the triumphal piers of the church above are rising.  The Abbot, Ralph of Beaumont, is host; Duke William sits with him on a dais; Harold is by his side “a grant enor”; the Duke’s brother, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, with the other chief vassals, are present; and the Duke’s jongleur Taillefer is at his elbow.  The room is crowded with soldiers and monks, but all are equally anxious to hear Taillefer sing.  As soon as dinner is over, at a nod from the Duke, Taillefer begins:—­

Carles li reis nostre emperere magnes
 Set anz tuz pleins ad estet en Espaigne
 Cunquist la tere tresque en la mer altaigne
 Ni ad castel ki devant lui remaigne
 Murs ne citez ni est remes a fraindre.

Charles the king, our emperor, the great,
 Seven years complete has been in Spain,
 Conquered the land as far as the high seas,
 Nor is there castle that holds against him,
 Nor wall or city left to capture.

The “Chanson” opened with these lines, which had such a direct and personal bearing on every one who heard them as to sound like prophecy.  Within ten years William was to stand in England where Charlemagne stood in Spain.  His mind was full of it, and of the means to attain it; and Harold was even more absorbed than he by the anxiety of the position.  Harold had been obliged to take oath that he would support William’s claim to the English throne, but he was still undecided, and William knew men too well to feel much confidence in an oath.  As Taillefer sang on, he reached the part of Ganelon, the typical traitor, the invariable figure of mediaeval society.  No feudal lord was without a Ganelon.  Duke William saw them all about him.

He might have felt that Harold would play the part, but if Harold should choose rather to be Roland, Duke William could have foretold that his own brother, Bishop Odo, after gorging himself on the plunder of half England, would turn into a Ganelon so dangerous as to require a prison for life.  When Taillefer reached the battle-scenes, there was no further need of imagination to realize them.  They were scenes of yesterday and to-morrow.  For that matter,