So Robert, who might have been a daring and useful friend to his brother,
had he been forced to take for granted from birth that he was nobody, and
his brother everybody,--as do all younger sons of English noblemen, to
their infinite benefit,--held himself to be an injured man for life,
because his father called his first-born Baldwin, and promised him the
succession,--which indeed he had worthily deserved, according to the laws
of Mammon and this world, by bringing into the family such an heiress as
Richilda and such a dowry as Mons.
But Robert, who thought himself as good as his brother,--though he was not
such, save in valor,--nursed black envy in his heart. Hard it was to him
to hear his elder brother called Baldwin of Mons, when he himself had not
a foot of land of his own. Harder still to hear him called Baldwin the
Good, when he felt in himself no title whatsoever to that epithet. Hardest
of all to see a beautiful boy grow up, as heir both of Flanders and of
Hainault.
Had he foreseen whither that envy would have led him; had he foreseen the
hideous and fratracidal day of February 22d, 1071, and that fair boy's
golden locks rolling in dust and blood,--the wild Viking would have
crushed the growing snake within his bosom; for he was a knight and a
gentleman.
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