ved to make his escape, and fled to a certain monastery which was
under Matilda's special patronage and charge. A monastery was, in those
days, a sanctuary into which the arm even of the most despotic authority
scarcely dared to intrude in pursuit of its victim. To make the safety
doubly sure, the abbot proposed that the trembling fugitive should join
their order and become a monk. Sampson was willing to do any thing to
save his life. The operation of putting out the eyes was very generally
fatal, so that he considered his life at stake. He was, accordingly,
shaven and shorn, and clothed in the monastic garb. He assumed the vows
of the order, and entered, with his brother monks, upon the course of
fastings, penances, and prayers which pertained to his new vocation; and
William left him to pursue it in peace.

Things went on worse instead of better after this discovery of the
mother's participation in the councils of the son. Either through the
aid which his mother had rendered, or by other means, there seemed to be
a strong party in and out of Normandy who were inclined to espouse
Robert's cause. His friends, at length, raised a very considerable
army, and putting him at the head of it, they advanced to attack Rouen.
The king, greatly alarmed at this danger, collected all the forces that
he could command, and went to meet his rebel son. William Rufus
accompanied his father, intending to fight by his side; while Matilda,
in an agony of terror and distress, remained, half distracted, within
her castle walls--as a wife and mother might be expected to be, on the
approach of a murderous conflict between her husband and her son. The
thought that one of them might, perhaps, be actually killed by the
other, filled her with dismay.

And, in fact, this dreadful result came very near being realized.
Robert, in the castle at L'Aigle, had barely been prevented from
destroying his brother, and now, on the plain of Archembraye, where this
battle was fought, his father _fell_, and was very near being killed, by
his hand. In the midst of the fight, while the horsemen were impetuously
charging each other in various parts of the field, all so disguised by
their armor that no one could know the individual with whom he was
contending, Robert encountered a large and powerful knight, and drove
his lance through his armor into his arm. Through the shock of the
encounter and the faintness produced by the agony of the wound, the
horseman fell t