desperate resistance. It was the
phrensy of vengeance and hate that these atrocities awakened every where
among the Danes, which nerved them with so much vigor and strength that
they finally expelled him from the island; so that, when he arrived in
Normandy, a fugitive and an exile, he came in the character of a
dethroned tyrant, execrated for his senseless and atrocious cruelties,
and not in that of an unhappy prince driven from his home by the
pressure of unavoidable calamity. Nevertheless, Richard, the Duke of
Normandy, received him, as we have already said, with kindness. He felt
the obligation of receiving the exiled monarch in a hospitable manner,
if not on his own account, at least for the sake of Emma and the
children.

The origin and end of Emma's interest in Ethelred seems to have been
merely ambition. The "Pearl of Normandy" had given herself to this
monster for the sake, apparently, of the glory of being the English
queen. Her subsequent conduct compels the readers of history to make
this supposition, which otherwise would be uncharitable. She now
mourned her disappointment in finding that, instead of being sustained
by her husband in the lofty position to which she aspired, she was
obliged to come back to her former home again, to be once more
dependent, and with the additional burden of her husband himself, and
her children, upon her father's family. Her situation was rendered even
still more humiliating, in some degree, by the circumstances that her
father was no longer alive, and that it was to her brother, on whom her
natural claim was far less strong, that she had now to look for shelter
and protection. Richard, however, received them all in a kind and
generous manner.

In the mean time, the wars and commotions which had driven Ethelred
away continued to rage in England, the Saxons gradually gaining
ground against the Danes. At length the king of the Danes, who had
seized the government when Ethelred was expelled, died. The Saxons then
regained their former power, and they sent commissioners to Ethelred to
propose his return to England. At the same time, they expressed their
unwillingness to receive him, unless they could bind him, by a solemn
treaty, to take a very different course of conduct, in the future
management of his government, from that which he had pursued before.
Ethelred and Emma were eager to regain, on any terms, their lost throne.
They sent over embassadors empowered to make, in Eth