“Very true; and I dare say you find desk work sometimes very dull; I never could make anything of it myself. I can manage a book well enough, if it be well written, and on points I care for; but I would sooner listen than read any time,” said Gerard. “Indeed I should be right glad to see the minstrel and the storyteller going their rounds again. It would be easy after a day’s work, when one has not, as I have now, a good child to read to me.”
“This volume?” said Egremont drawing his chair to the table and looking at Sybil, who intimated assent by a nod.
“Ah! it’s a fine book,” said Gerard, “though on a sad subject.”
“The History of the Conquest of England by the Normans,” said Egremont, reading the title page on which also was written “Ursula Trafford to Sybil Gerard.”
“You know it?” said Sybil.
“Only by fame.”
“Perhaps the subject may not interest you so much as it does us,” said Sybil.
“It must interest all and all alike,” said her father; “for we are divided between the conquerors and the conquered.”
“But do not you think,” said Egremont, “that such a distinction has long ceased to exist?”
“In what degree?” asked Gerard. “Many circumstances of oppression have doubtless gradually disappeared: but that has arisen from the change of manners, not from any political recognition of their injustice. The same course of time which has removed many enormities, more shocking however to our modern feelings than to those who devised and endured them, has simultaneously removed many alleviating circumstances. If the mere baron’s grasp be not so ruthless, the champion we found in the church is no longer so ready. The spirit of Conquest has adapted itself to the changing circumstances of ages, and however its results vary in form, in degree they are much the same.”