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THE NORMANS IN THE SOUTH
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with advising the traveller to keep his face always to the east and ask God's help.

In all this life of the road the Normans took their full share. Michelet would have it that their motive was the Norman spirit of gain, no longer able to plunder neighbors at home, but glad of the chance of making something on the way and the certainty of gaining a hundred per cent by assuring the soul's salvation at the journey's end. Certainly they were not afraid to travel nor averse to taking advantage of the opportunities which travel might bring. We find them, sometimes singly and sometimes in armed bands, on the road to Spain, to Rome, and to the Holy City. At one time it may be the duke himself, Robert the Magnificent, who wends his way with a goodly company to the Holy Sepulchre, only to die at Nicæa on his return; or a holy abbot, like Thierry of Saint-Évroul, denied the sight of the earthly Jerusalem which he sought, but turning his thoughts to the city not made with hands as he composed himself for his last sleep before a lonely altar on the shores of Cyprus. In other cases we find the military element preponderating, as with Roger of Toeni, who led an army against the Saracens of Spain in the time of Duke Richard the Good, or Robert Crispin half a century later, fighting in Spain, sojourning in Italy, and finally passing into the service of the emperor at Constantinople, where he had "much triumph and much victory." In this stirring world the line be-