MBERS.]

They took the suffering monarch to Rouen. The ablest physicians were
summoned to his bed-side. After examining his case, they concluded that
he must die. The tidings threw the unhappy patient into a state of
extreme anxiety and terror. The recollection of the thousand deeds of
selfish ambition and cruelty which he had been perpetrating, he said,
all his days, filled him with remorse. He shrunk back with invincible
dread from the hour, now so rapidly approaching, when he was to appear
in judgment before God, and answer, like any common mortal, for his
crimes. He had been accustomed all his life to consider himself as above
all law, superior to all power, and beyond the reach of all judicial
question. But now his time had come. He who had so often made others
tremble, trembled now in his turn, with an acuteness of terror and
distress which only the boldest and most high-handed offenders ever
feel. He cried bitterly to God for forgiveness, and brought the monks
around him to help him with incessant prayers. He ordered all the money
that he had on hand to be given to the poor. He sent commands to have
the churches which he had burned at Mantes rebuilt, and the other
injuries which he had effected in his anger repaired. In a word, he gave
himself very earnestly to the work of attempting, by all the means
considered most efficacious in those days, to avert and appease the
dreaded anger of heaven.

Of his three oldest sons, Robert was away; the quarrel between him and
his father had become irreconcilable, and he would not come to visit
him, even in his dying hours. William Rufus and Henry were there, and
they remained very constantly at their father's bed-side--not, however,
from a principle of filial affection, but because they wanted to be
present when he should express his last wishes in respect to the
disposal of his dominions. Such an expression, though oral, would be
binding as a will. When, at length, the king gave his dying directions
in respect to the succession, it appeared that, after all, he considered
his right to the English throne as very doubtful in the sight of God. He
had, in a former part of his life, promised Normandy to Robert, as his
inheritance, when he himself should die; and though he had so often
refused to surrender it to him while he himself continued to live, he
confirmed his title to the succession now. "I have promised it to him,"
he said, "and I keep my promise; and yet I know that tha