plundered by his attendants of gold and furnishings and apparel, just as William the Conqueror had been despoiled in the hour of his death at Rouen, till some one in pity threw over the royal corpse the short cloak, or 'curt mantle,' by which men called him. Two days later he was laid away quietly in the nunnery of Fontevrault, where a later age was to rob his tomb of all save the noble recumbent figure by which it is still marked. Thus passed away the greatest ruler of his age; thus began the collapse of the Norman empire.
Strikingly dramatic both in its public and private aspects, the end of Henry II offers material fit for a Greek tragedy, and we may, if we choose, imagine an Æschylus or a Sophocles painting the rapidity of his rise, the hybris of his splendor, and the crushing nemesis of his fall. Even the Promethean touch is not lacking in the withdrawal of Henry's unconquered soul from God, as he looked back in flight at the burning city of LeMans: "My God, since to crown my confusion and increase my disgrace, thou hast taken from me so vilely
the town which on earth I have loved best, where I was born and bred, and where my father lies buried and the body of St. Julian too, I will have my revenge on thee also; I will of a surety withdraw from thee that thing that thou lovesť best in me."[1] Henry's life needs no blasphemous closing in order to furnish inexhaustible
- ↑ Giraldus Cambrensis (Rolls Series), viii, p. 283.
