 defenders.«
    »The king saved his city by being reconciled to me, and taking again my
daughter, whom he had put away from him; and thus, having frightened the king
into what concessions I thought proper, I dismissed my army and fleet, with
which I intended, could I not have succeeded otherwise, to have sacked the city
of London and ravaged the whole country.«
    »I was no sooner re-established in the king's favour, or, what was as well
for me, the appearance of it, than I fell violently on the archbishop. He had of
himself retired to his monastery in Normandy; but that did not content me: I had
him formally banished, the see declared vacant, and then filled up by another.«
    »I enjoyed my grandeur a very short time after my restoration to it; for the
king, hating and fearing me to a very great degree, and finding no means of
openly destroying me, at last effected his purpose by poison, and then spread
abroad a ridiculous story, of my wishing the next morsel might choak me if I had
had any hand in the death of Alfred; and, accordingly, that the next morsel, by
a divine judgment, stuck in my throat and performed that office.«
    »This of a statesman was one of my worst stages in the other world. It is a
post subjected daily to the greatest danger and inquietude, and attended with
little pleasure and less ease. In a word, it is a pill which, was it not gilded
over by ambition, would appear nauseous and detestable in the eye of every one;
and perhaps that is one reason why Minos so greatly compassionates the case of
those who swallow it: for that just judge told me he always acquitted a prime
minister who could produce one single good action in his whole life, let him
have committed ever so many crimes. Indeed, I understood him a little too
largely, and was stepping towards the gate; but he pulled me by the sleeve, and,
telling me no prime minister ever entered there, bid me go back again; saying,
he thought I had sufficient reason to rejoice in my escaping the bottomless pit,
which half my crimes committed in any other capacity would have entitled me to.«
 

                               Chapter Twenty-One

                 Julian's adventures in the post of a soldier.

I was born at Caen, in Normandy. My mother's name was Matilda; as for my father,
I am not so certain, for the good woman on her deathbed assured me she herself
could bring
