Publicly, therefore, in the sight of God and
man, do I claim my inheritance, and protest against the body of the
plunderer being covered with my turf."--The appeal was attended with
instant effect; bishops and nobles united in their entreaties to
Asselin; they admitted the justice of his claim; they pacified him; they
paid him sixty shillings on the spot by way of recompence for the place
of sepulture; and, finally, they satisfied him for the rest of the land.
But the remarkable incidents doomed to attend upon this burial, were not
yet at an end; for at the time when they were laying the corpse in the
sarcophagus, and were bending it with some force, which they were
compelled to do, in consequence of the coffin having been made too
short, the body, which was extremely corpulent, burst, and so
intolerable a stench issued from the grave, that all the perfumes which
arose from all the censers of the priests and acolytes were of no avail;
and the rites were concluded in haste, and the assembly, struck with
horror, returned to their homes.
The latter part of this story accords but ill with what De Bourgueville
relates. We learn from this author, that four hundred and thirty years
subsequent to the death of the Conqueror, a Roman cardinal, attended by
an archbishop and bishop, visited the town of Caen, and that his
eminence having expressed a wish to see the body of the duke, the monks
yielded to his curiosity, and the tomb was opened, and the corpse
discovered in so perfect a state, that the cardinal caused a portrait to
be taken from the lifeless features.
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