r one
of the richest and most populous territories of the globe, and though
William the Conqueror was the son of one of them, his birth was
nevertheless very ignoble. His mother was not the wife of Robert his
father, but a poor peasant girl, the daughter of an humble tanner of
Falaise; and, indeed, William's father, Robert, was not himself the duke
at this time, but a simple baron, as his father was still living. It
was not even certain that he ever would be the duke, as his older
brother, who, of course, would come before him, was also then alive.
Still, as the son and prospective heir of the reigning duke, his rank
was very high.

The circumstances of Robert's first acquaintance with the tanner's
daughter were these. He was one day returning home to the castle from
some expedition on which he had been sent by his father, when he saw a
group of peasant girls standing on the margin of the brook, washing
clothes. They were barefooted, and their dress was in other respects
disarranged. There was one named Arlotte,[B] the daughter of a tanner of
the town, whose countenance and figure seem to have captivated the young
baron. He gazed at her with admiration and pleasure as he rode along.
Her complexion was fair, her eyes full and blue, and the expression of
her countenance was frank, and open, and happy. She was talking joyously
and merrily with her companions as Robert passed, little dreaming of the
conspicuous place on the page of English history which she was to
occupy, in all future time, in connection with the gay horseman who was
riding by.

[Footnote B: Her name is spelled variously, Arlette, Arlotte, Harlotte,
and in other ways.]

The etiquette of royal and ducal palaces and castles in those days, as
now, forbade that a noble of such lofty rank should marry a peasant
girl. Robert could not, therefore, have Arlotte for his wife; but there
was nothing to prevent his proposing her coming to the castle and living
with him--that is, nothing but the law of God, and this was an authority
to which dukes and barons in the Middle Ages were accustomed to pay very
little regard. There was not even a public sentiment to forbid this, for
a nobility like that of England and France in the Middle Ages stands so
far above all the mass of society as to be scarcely amenable at all to
the ordinary restrictions and obligations of social life. And even to
the present day, in those countries where dukes exist, public sentiment
seems to