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, 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. It is not worth while now to inquire into the truth of
this story, or the fidelity of the resemblance. The painting has
disappeared in the course of time: it hung for awhile against the walls of
the church, opposite to the monument, but it was stolen during the tumults
caused by the Huguenots, and was broken into two pieces, in which state De
Bourgueville saw it a few years afterwards, in the hands of a Calvinist,
one Peter Hode, the gaoler at Caen, who used it in the double capacity of
a table and a door. The worthy magistrate states, that he kept the picture,
"because the abbey-church was demolished."
He was himself present at the second violation of the royal tomb, in 1572;
and he gives a piteous account of the transaction. The monument raised to
the memory of the Conqueror, by his son.
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