With her theories of courteous love, every one is more or less familiar if only from the ridicule of Cervantes and the follies of Quixote, who, though four hundred years younger, was Lancelot's child; but we never can know how far she took herself and her laws of love seriously, and to speculate on so deep a subject as her seriousness is worse than useless, since she would herself have been as uncertain as her lovers were. Visionary as the courtesy was, the Holy Grail was as practical as any bric-a-brac that has survived of the time. The mystery of Perceval is like that of the Gothic cathedral, illuminated by floods of light, and enlivened by rivers of colour. Unfortunately Christian never told what he meant by the fragment, itself a mystery, in which he narrated the story of the knight who saw the Holy Grail, because the knight, who was warned, as usual, to ask no questions, for once, unlike most knights, obeyed the warning when he should have disregarded it. As knights-errant necessarily did the wrong thing in order to make their adventures possible, Perceval's error cannot be in itself mysterious, nor was the castle in any way mysterious where the miracle occurred, It appeared to him to be the usual castle, and he saw nothing unusual in the manner of his reception by the usual old lord, or in the fact that both seated themselves quite simply before the hall-fire with the usual household. Then, as though it were an everyday habit, the Holy Grail was brought in (Bartsch, "Chrestomathie," 183-85, ed. 1895):—
Et leans avail luminaireSi grant con l'an le porrait faireDe chandoiles a un ostel.Que qu'il parloient d'un et d'el,Uns vallez d'une chambre vintQui une blanche lance tintAmpoigniee par le mi lieu.Si passa par endroit le feuEt cil qui al feu se seoient,Et tuit cil de leans veoientLa lance blanche et le fer blanc.S'issoit une gote de sangDel fer de la lance au sommet,Et jusqu'a la main au vasletCoroit cele gote vermoille….A tant dui autre vaslet vindrentQui chandeliers an lors mains tindrentDe fin or ovrez a neel.Li vaslet estoient moult belQui les chandeliers aportoient.An chacun chandelier ardoientDous chandoiles a tot le mains.Un graal antre ses dous mainsUne demoiselle tenoit,Qui avec les vaslets venoit,Bele et gente et bien acesmee.Quant cle fu leans antreeAtot le graal qu'ele tintUne si granz clartez i vintQu'ausi perdirent les chandoilesLor clarte come les estoilesQant li solauz luist et la lune.Apres celi an revint uneQui tint un tailleor d'argent.
Le graal qui aloit devantDe fin or esmere estoit,Pierres precieuses avoitEl graal de maintes menieresDes plus riches et des plus chieresQui en mer ne en terre soient.Totes autres pierres passoientCeles del graal sanz dotance.
Tot ainsi con passa la lancePar devant le lit trespasserentEt d'une chambre a l'autre alerent.Et li vaslet les vit passer,Ni n'osa mire demanderDel graal cui l'an an servoit.
And, within, the hall was brightAs any hall could be with lightOf candles in a house at night.So, while of this and that they talked,A squire from a chamber walked,Bearing a white lance in his hand,Grasped by the middle, like a wand;And, as he passed the chimney wide,Those seated by the fireside,And all the others, caught a glanceOf the white steel and the white lance.As they looked, a drop of bloodDown the lance's handle flowed;Down to where the youth's hand stood.From the lance-head at the topThey saw run that crimson drop….Presently came two more squires,In their hands two chandeliers,Of fine gold in enamel wrought.Each squire that the candle broughtWas a handsome chevalier.There burned in every chandelierTwo lighted candles at the least.A damsel, graceful and well dressed,Behind the squires followed fastWho carried in her hands a graal;And as she came within the hallWith the graal there came a light So brilliant that the candles allLost clearness, as the stars at nightWhen moon shines, or in day the sun.After her there followed oneWho a dish of silver bore.
The graal, which had gone before,Of gold the finest had been made,With precious stones had been inlaid,Richest and rarest of each kindThat man in sea or earth could find.All other jewels far surpassedThose which the holy graal enchased.
Just as before had passed the lanceThey all before the bed advance,Passing straightway through the hall,And the knight who saw them passNever ventured once to askFor the meaning of the graal.
The simplicity of this narration gives a certain dramatic effect to the mystery, like seeing a ghost in full daylight, but Christian carried simplicity further still. He seemed either to feel, or to want others to feel, the reality of the adventure and the miracle, and he followed up the appearance of the graal by a solid meal in the style of the twelfth century, such as one expects to find in "Ivanhoe" or the "Talisman." The knight sat down with his host to the best dinner that the county of Champagne afforded, and they ate their haunch of venison with the graal in full view. They drank their Champagne wine of various sorts, out of gold cups:—
Vins clers ne raspez ne lor fautA copes dorees a boivre;
they sat before the fire and talked till bedtime, when the squires made up the beds in the hall, and brought in supper—dates, figs, nutmegs, spices, pomegranates, and at last lectuaries, suspiciously like what we call jams; and "alexandrine gingerbread"; after which they drank various drinks, with or without spice or honey or pepper; and old moret, which is thought to be mulberry wine, but which generally went with clairet, a colourless grape-juice, or piment. At least, here are the lines, and one may translate them to suit one's self:—
Et li vaslet aparellierentLes lis et le fruit au colchierQue il en i ot de moult chier,Dates, figues, et nois mugates,Girofles et pomes de grenates,Et leituaires an la fin,Et gingenbret alixandrin.Apres ce burent de maint boivre,Piment ou n'ot ne miel ne poivreEt viez more et cler sirop.
The twelfth century had the child's love of sweets and spices and preserved fruits, and drinks sweetened or spiced, whether they were taken for supper or for poetry; the true knight's palate was fresh and his appetite excellent either for sweets or verses or love; the world was young then; Robin Hoods lived in every forest, and Richard Coeur-de-Lion was not yet twenty years old. The pleasant adventures of Robin Hood were real, as you can read in the stories of a dozen outlaws, and men troubled themselves about pain and death much as healthy bears did, in the mountains. Life had miseries enough, but few shadows deeper than those of the imaginative lover, or the terrors of ghosts at night. Men's imaginations ran riot, but did not keep them awake; at least, neither the preserved fruits nor the mulberry wine nor the clear syrup nor the gingerbread nor the Holy Graal kept Perceval awake, but he slept the sound and healthy sleep of youth, and when he woke the next morning, he felt only a mild surprise to find that his host and household had disappeared, leaving him to ride away without farewell, breakfast, or Graal.
Christian wrote about Perceval in 1174 in the same spirit in which the workmen in glass, thirty years later, told the story of Charlemagne. One artist worked for Mary of Champagne; the others for Mary of Chartres, commonly known as the Virgin; but all did their work in good faith, with the first, fresh, easy instinct of colour, light, and line. Neither of the two Maries was mystical, in a modern sense; none of the artists was oppressed by the burden of doubt; their scepticism was as childlike as faith. If one has to make an exception, perhaps the passion of love was more serious than that of religion, and gave to religion the deepest emotion, and the most complicated one, which society knew. Love was certainly a passion; and even more certainly it was, as seen in poets like Dante and Petrarch,—in romans like "Lancelot" and "Aucassin,"—in ideals like the Virgin,—complicated beyond modern conception. For this reason the loss of Christian's "Tristan" makes a terrible gap in art, for Christian's poem would have given the first and best idea of what led to courteous love. The "Tristan" was written before 1160, and belonged to the cycle of Queen Eleanor of England rather than to that of her daughter Mary of Troyes; but the subject was one neither of courtesy nor of France; it belonged to an age far behind the eleventh century, or even the tenth, or indeed any century within the range of French history; and it was as little fitted for Christian's way of treatment as for any avowed burlesque. The original Tristan—critics say—was not French, and neither Tristan nor Isolde had ever a drop of French blood in their veins. In their form as Christian received it, they were Celts or Scots; they came from Brittany, Wales, Ireland, the northern ocean, or farther still. Behind the Welsh Tristan, which passed probably through England to Normandy and thence to France and Champagne, critics detect a far more ancient figure living in a form of society that France could not remember ever to have known. King Marc was a tribal chief of the Stone Age whose subjects loved the forest and lived on the sea or in caves; King Marc's royal hall was a common shelter on the banks of a stream, where every one was at home, and king, queen, knights, attendants, and dwarf slept on the floor, on beds laid down where they pleased; Tristan's weapons were the bow and stone knife; he never saw a horse or a spear; his ideas of loyalty and Isolde's ideas of marriage were as vague as Marc's royal authority; and all were alike unconscious of law, chivalry, or church. The note they sang was more unlike the note of Christian, if possible, than that of Richard Wagner; it was the simplest expression of rude and primitive love, as one could perhaps find it among North American Indians, though hardly so defiant even there, and certainly in the Icelandic Sagas hardly so lawless; but it was a note of real passion, and touched the deepest chords of sympathy in the artificial society of the twelfth century, as it did in that of the nineteenth. The task of the French poet was to tone it down and give it the fashionable dress, the pointed shoes and long sleeves, of the time. "The Frenchman," says Gaston Paris, "is specially interested in making his story entertaining for the society it is meant for; he is 'social'; that is, of the world; he smiles at the adventures he tells, and delicately lets you see that he is not their dupe; he exerts himself to give to his style a constant elegance, a uniform polish, in which a few neatly turned, clever phrases sparkle here and there; above all, he wants to please, and thinks of his audience more than of his subject."
In the twelfth century he wanted chiefly to please women, as Orderic complained; Isolde came out of Brittany to meet Eleanor coming up from Guienne, and the Virgin from the east; and all united in giving law to society. In each case it was the woman, not the man, who gave the law;—it was Mary, not the Trinity; Eleanor, not Louis VII; Isolde, not Tristan. No doubt, the original Tristan had given the law like Roland or Achilles, but the twelfth-century Tristan was a comparatively poor creature. He was in his way a secondary figure in the romance, as Louis VII was to Eleanor and Abelard to Heloise. Every one knows how, about twenty years before Eleanor came to Paris, the poet-professor Abelard, the hero of the Latin Quarter, had sung to Heloise those songs which—he tells us—resounded through Europe as widely as his scholastic fame, and probably to more effect for his renown. In popular notions Heloise was Isolde, and would in a moment have done what Isolde did (Bartsch, 107-08):—
Quaint reis Marcs nus out conjeiesE de sa curt nus out chascez,As mains ensemble nus preismesE hors de la sale en eissimes,A la forest puis en alasmes
E un mult bel liu i trouvamesE une roche, fu cavee,Devant ert estraite la entree,Dedans fu voesse ben faite,Tante bel cum se fust portraite.
When King Marc had banned us both,And from his court had chased us forth,Hand in hand each clasping fastStraight from out the hall we passed;To the forest turned our face;
Found in it a perfect place,Where the rock that made a caveHardly more than passage gave;Spacious within and fit for use,As though it had been planned for us.
At any time of her life, Heloise would have defied society or church, and would—at least in the public's fancy—have taken Abelard by the hand and gone off to the forest much more readily than she went to the cloister; but Abelard would have made a poor figure as Tristan. Abelard and Christian of Troyes were as remote as we are from the legendary Tristan; but Isolde and Heloise, Eleanor and Mary were the immortal and eternal woman. The legend of Isolde, both in the earlier and the later version, seems to have served as a sacred book to the women of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and Christian's Isolde surely helped Mary in giving law to the Court of Troyes and decisions in the Court of Love.
Countess Mary's authority lasted from 1164 to 1198, thirty-four years, during which, at uncertain intervals, glimpses of her influence flash out in poetry rather than in prose. Christian began his "Roman de la Charette" by invoking her:—
Puisque ma dame de ChanpaigneVialt que romans a faire anpraigne
Si deist et jel tesmoignasseQue ce est la dame qui passeTotes celes qui sont vivanzSi con li funs passe les vanzQui vante en Mai ou en Avril
Dirai je: tant com une jameVaut de pailes et de sardinesVaut la contesse de reines?
Christian chose curious similes. His dame surpassed all living rivals as smoke passes the winds that blow in May; or as much as a gem would buy of straws and sardines is the Countess worth in queens. Louis XIV would have thought that Christian might be laughing at him, but court styles changed with their masters. Louis XIV would scarcely have written a prison-song to his sister such as Richard Coeur-de-Lion wrote to Mary of Champagne:—
Ja nus bons pris ne dirat sa raisonAdroitement s'ansi com dolans non;Mais par confort puet il faire chanson.Moult ai d'amins, mais povre sont li don;Honte en avront se por ma reanconSuix ces deus yvers pris.
Ceu sevent bien mi home et mi baron,Englois, Normant, Poitevin et Gascon,Ke je n'avoie si povre compaingnonCui je laissasse por avoir au prixon.Je nel di pas por nulle retraison,Mais ancor suix je pris.
Or sai ge bien de voir certainementKe mors ne pris n'ait amin ne parent,Cant on me lait por or ne por argent.Moult m'est de moi, mais plus m'est de ma gentC'apres ma mort avront reprochier grantSe longement suix pris.
N'est pas mervelle se j'ai lo cuer dolentCant li miens sires tient ma terre en torment.S'or li menbroit de nostre sairementKe nos feismes andui communament,Bien sai de voir ke ceans longementNe seroie pas pris.
Ce sevent bien Angevin et Torain,Cil bacheler ki or sont fort et sain,C'ancombreis suix long d'aus en autrui main.Forment m'amoient, mais or ne m'aimment grain.De belles armes sont ores veut cil plain,Por tant ke je suix pris.
Mes compaingnons cui j'amoie et cui j'aim,Ces dou Caheu et ces dou Percherain,Me di, chanson, kil ne sont pas certain,
C'onques vers aus n'en oi cuer faus ne vain.S'il me guerroient, il font moult que villainTant com je serai pris.
Comtesse suer, vostre pris soverainVos saut et gart cil a cui je me claimEt par cui je suix pris.Je n'ou di pas de celi de ChartainLa meire Loweis.
No prisoner can tell his honest thoughtUnless he speaks as one who suffers wrong;But for his comfort he may make a song.My friends are many, but their gifts are naught.Shame will be theirs, if, for my ransom, hereI lie another year.
They know this well, my barons and my men,Normandy, England, Gascony, Poitou,That I had never follower so lowWhom I would leave in prison to my gain.I say it not for a reproach to them,But prisoner I am!
The ancient proverb now I know for sure:Death and a prison know nor kin nor tie,Since for mere lack of gold they let me lie.Much for myself I grieve; for them still more.After my death they will have grievous wrongIf I am prisoner long.
What marvel that my heart is sad and soreWhen my own lord torments my helpless lands!Well do I know that, if he held his hands,Remembering the common oath we swore,I should not here imprisoned with my song,Remain a prisoner long.
They know this well who now are rich and strongYoung gentlemen of Anjou and Touraine,That far from them, on hostile bonds I strain.They loved me much, but have not loved me long.Their plains will see no more fair lists arrayed,While I lie here betrayed.
Companions, whom I loved, and still do love,Geoffroi du Perche and Ansel de Caleux,Tell them, my song, that they are friends untrue.
Never to them did I false-hearted prove;But they do villainy if they war on me,While I lie here, unfree.
Countess sister! your sovereign fameMay he preserve whose help I claim,Victim for whom am I!I say not this of Chartres' dame,Mother of Louis!
Richard's prison-song, one of the chief monuments of English literature, sounds to every ear, accustomed to twelfth-century verse, as charming as when it was household rhyme to
mi ome et mi baron Englois, Normant, Poitevin et Gascon.
Not only was Richard a far greater king than any Louis ever was, but he also composed better poetry than any other king who is known to tourists, and, when he spoke to his sister in this cry of the heart altogether singular among monarchs, he made law and style, above discussion. Whether he meant to reproach his other sister, Alix of Chartres, historians may tell, if they know. If he did, the reproach answered its purpose, for the song was written in 1193; Richard was ransomed and released in 1194; and in 1198 the young Count "Loweis" of Chartres and Blois leagued with the Counts of Flanders, Le Perche, Guines, and Toulouse, against Philip Augustus, in favor of Coeur-de-Lion to whom they rendered homage. In any case, neither Mary nor Alice in 1193 was reigning Countess. Mary was a widow since 1181, and her son Henry was Count in Champagne, apparently a great favourite with his uncle Richard Coeur-de-Lion. The life of this Henry of Champagne was another twelfth-century romance, but can serve no purpose here except to recall the story that his mother, the great Countess Mary, died in 1198 of sorrow for the death of this son, who was then King of Jerusalem, and was killed, in 1197, by a fall from the window of his palace at Acre. Coeur-de-Lion died in 1199. In 1201, Mary's other son, who succeeded Henry,—Count Thibaut III,—died, leaving a posthumous heir, famous in the thirteenth century as Thibaut-le-Grand—the Thibaut of Queen Blanche.
They were all astonishing—men and women—and filled the world, for two hundred years, with their extraordinary energy and genius; but the greatest of all was old Queen Eleanor, who survived her son Coeur-de-Lion, as well as her two husbands,—Louis-le-Jeune and Henry II Plantagenet,—and was left in 1200 still struggling to repair the evils and fend off the dangers they caused. "Queen by the wrath of God," she called herself, and she knew what just claim she had to the rank. Of her two husbands and ten children, little remained except her son John, who, by the unanimous voice of his family, his friends, his enemies, and even his admirers, achieved a reputation for excelling in every form of twelfth-century crime. He was a liar and a traitor, as was not uncommon, but he was thought to be also a coward, which, in that family, was singular. Some redeeming quality he must have had, but none is recorded. His mother saw him running, in his masculine, twelfth-century recklessness, to destruction, and she made a last and a characteristic effort to save him and Guienne by a treaty of amity with the French king, to be secured by the marriage of the heir of France, Louis, to Eleanor's granddaughter, John's niece, Blanche of Castile, then twelve or thirteen years old. Eleanor herself was eighty, and yet she made the journey to Spain, brought back the child to Bordeaux, affianced her to Louis VIII as she had herself been affianced in 1137 to Louis VII, and in May, 1200, saw her married. The French had then given up their conventional trick of attributing Eleanor's acts to her want of morals; and France gave her—as to most women after sixty years old—the benefit of the convention which made women respectable after they had lost the opportunity to be vicious. In French eyes, Eleanor played out the drama according to the rules. She could not save John, but she died in 1202, before his ruin, and you can still see her lying with her husband and her son Richard at Fontevrault in her twelfth-century tomb.
In 1223, Blanche became Queen of France. She was thirty-six years old. Her husband, Louis VIII, was ambitious to rival his father, Philip Augustus, who had seized Normandy in 1203. Louis undertook to seize Toulouse and Avignon. In 1225, he set out with a large army in which, among the chief vassals, his cousin Thibaut of Champagne led a contingent. Thibaut was five-and-twenty years old, and, like Pierre de Dreux, then Duke of Brittany, was one of the most brilliant and versatile men of his time, and one of the greatest rulers. As royal vassal Thibaut owed forty days' service in the field; but his interests were at variance with the King's, and at the end of the term he marched home with his men, leaving the King to fall ill and die in Auvergne, November 8, 1226, and a child of ten years old to carry on the government as Louis IX.
Chartres Cathedral has already told the story twice, in stone and glass; but Thibaut does not appear there, although he saved the Queen. Some member of the royal family must be regent. Queen Blanche took the place, and of course the princes of the blood, who thought it was their right, united against her. At first, Blanche turned violently on Thibaut and forbade him to appear at the coronation at Rheims in his own territory, on November 29, as though she held him guilty of treason; but when the league of great vassals united to deprive her of the regency, she had no choice but to detach at any cost any member of the league, and Thibaut alone offered help. What price she paid him was best known to her; but what price she would be believed to have paid him was as well known to her as what had been said of her grandmother Eleanor when she changed her allegiance in 1152. If the scandal had concerned Thibaut alone, she might have been well content, but Blanche was obliged also to pay desperate court to the papal legate. Every member of her husband's family united against her and libelled her character with the freedom which enlivened and envenomed royal tongues.
Maintes paroles en dit enComme d'Iseult et de Tristan.
Had this been all, she would have cared no more than Eleanor or any other queen had cared, for in French drama, real or imaginary, such charges were not very serious and hardly uncomplimentary; but Iseult had never been accused, over and above her arbitrary views on the marriage-contract, of acting as an accomplice with Tristan in poisoning King Marc. French convention required that Thibaut should have poisoned Louis VIII for love of the Queen, and that this secret reciprocal love should control their lives. Fortunately for Blanche she was a devout ally of the Church, and the Church believed evil only of enemies. The legate and the prelates rallied to her support and after eight years of desperate struggle they crushed Pierre Mauclerc and saved Thibaut and Blanche.
For us the poetry is history, and the facts are false. French art starts not from facts, but from certain assumptions as conventional as a legendary window, and the commonest convention is the Woman. The fact, then as now, was Power, or its equivalent in exchange, but Frenchmen, while struggling for the Power, expressed it in terms of Art. They looked on life as a drama,—and on drama as a phase of life—in which the bystanders were bound to assume and accept the regular stage-plot. That the plot might be altogether untrue to real life affected in no way its interest. To them Thibaut and Blanche were bound to act Tristan and Isolde. Whatever they were when off the stage, they were lovers on it. Their loves were as real and as reasonable as the worship of the Virgin. Courteous love was avowedly a form of drama, but not the less a force of society. Illusion for illusion, courteous love, in Thibaut's hands, or in the hands of Dante and Petrarch, was as substantial as any other convention;—the balance of trade, the rights of man, or the Athanasian Creed. In that sense the illusions alone were real; if the Middle Ages had reflected only what was practical, nothing would have survived for us.
Thibaut was Tristan, and is said to have painted his verses on the walls of his chateau. If he did, he painted there, in the opinion of M. Gaston Paris, better poetry than any that was written on paper or parchment, for Thibaut was a great prince and great poet who did in both characters whatever he pleased. In modern equivalents, one would give much to see the chateau again with the poetry on its walls. Provins has lost the verses, but Troyes still keeps some churches and glass of Thibaut's time which hold their own with the best. Even of Thibaut himself, something survives, and though it were only the memories of his seneschal, the famous Sire de Joinville, history and France would be poor without him. With Joinville in hand, you may still pass an hour in the company of these astonishing thirteenth-century men and women:—crusaders who fight, hunt, make love, build churches, put up glass windows to the Virgin, buy missals, talk scholastic philosophy, compose poetry: Blanche, Thibaut, Perron, Joinville, Saint Louis, Saint Thomas, Saint Dominic, Saint Francis—you may know them as intimately as you can ever know a world that is lost; and in the case of Thibaut you may know more, for he is still alive in his poems; he even vibrates with life. One might try a few verses, to see what he meant by courtesy. Perhaps he wrote them for Queen Blanche, but, to whomever he sent them, the French were right in thinking that she ought to have returned his love (edition of 1742):—
Nus hom ne puet ami reconforterSe cele non ou il a son cuer mis.Pour ce m'estuet sovent plaindre et plourerQue mis confors ne me vient, ce m'est vis,De la ou j'ai tote ma remembrance.Pour bien amer ai sovent esmaianceA dire voir.Dame, merci! donez moi esperanceDe joie avoir.
Jene puis pas sovent a li parlerNe remirer les biaus iex de son vis.Ce pois moi que je n'i puis alerCar ades est mes cuers ententis.
Ho! bele riens, douce sans conoissance,Car me mettez en millor attendanceDe bon espoir!Dame, merci! donez moi esperanceDe joie avoir.
Aucuns si sont qui me vuelent blamerQuant je ne di a qui je suis amis;Mais ja, dame, ne saura mon penserNus qui soit nes fors vous cui je le disCouardement a pavours a doutanceDont puestes vous lors bien a ma semblanceMon cuer savoir.Dame, merci! donez moi esperanceDe joie avoir.
There is no comfort to be found for painSave only where the heart has made its home.Therefore I can but murmur and complainBecause no comfort to my pain has comeFrom where I garnered all my happiness.From true love have I only earned distressThe truth to say.Grace, lady! give me comfort to possessA hope, one day.
Seldom the music of her voice I hearOr wonder at the beauty of her eyes.It grieves me that I may not follow thereWhere at her feet my heart attentive lies.
Oh, gentle Beauty without consciousness,Let me once feel a moment's hopefulness,If but one ray!Grace, lady! give me comfort to possessA hope, one day.
Certain there are who blame upon me throwBecause I will not tell whose love I seek;But truly, lady, none my thought shall know,None that is born, save you to whom I speakIn cowardice and awe and doubtfulness,That you may happily with fearlessnessMy heart essay.Grace, lady! give me comfort to possessA hope, one day.
Does Thibaut's verse sound simple? It is the simplicity of the thirteenth-century glass—so refined and complicated that sensible people are mostly satisfied to feel, and not to understand. Any blunderer in verse, who will merely look at the rhymes of these three stanzas, will see that simplicity is about as much concerned there as it is with the windows of Chartres; the verses are as perfect as the colours, and the versification as elaborate. These stanzas might have been addressed to Queen Blanche; now see how Thibaut kept the same tone of courteous love in addressing the Queen of Heaven!
De grant travail et de petit esploitVoi ce siegle cargie et encombreQue tant somes plain de maleurteKe nus ne pens a faire ce qu'il doit,Ains avons si le Deauble trouveQu'a lui servir chascuns paine et essaieEt Diex ki ot pour nos ja cruel plaieMetons arrier et sa grant dignite;Molt est hardis qui pour mort ne s'esmaie.
Diex que tout set et tout puet et tout voitNous auroit tost en entre-deus gieteSe la Dame plaine de grant bontePardelez lui pour nos ne li prioit
Si tres douc mot plaisant et savoureLe grant courous dou grant Signour apaie;Molt par est fox ki autre amor essaiK'en cestui n'a barat ne fauseteNe es autres n'a ne merti ne manaie.
La souris quiert pour son cors garandirContre l'yver la noif et le formentEt nous chaitif nous n'alons rien querantQuant nous morrons ou nous puissions garir.Nous ne cherchons fors k'infer le puant;Or esgardes come beste sauvagePourvoit de loin encontre son domageEt nous n'avons ne sens ne hardement;Il est avis que plain somes de rage.
Li Deable a getey por nos ravirQuatre amecons aescbies de torment;Covoitise lance premierementEt puis Orguel por sa grant rois emplirEt Luxure va le batel trainantFelonie les governe et les nage.Ensi peschant s'en viegnent au rivageDont Diex nous gart par son commandementEn qui sains fons nous feismes homage.
A la Dame qui tous les bien avanceT'en va, chancon s'el te vielt escouterOnques ne fu nus di millor chaunce.
With travail great, and little cargo fraught,See how our world is labouring in pain;So filled we are with love of evil gainThat no one thinks of doing what he ought,But we all hustle in the Devil's train,And only in his service toil and pray;And God, who suffered for us agony,We set behind, and treat him with disdain;Hardy is he whom death does not dismay.
God who rules all, from whom we can hide nought,Had quickly flung us back to nought againBut that our gentle, gracious, Lady QueenBegged him to spare us, and our pardon wrought;
Striving with words of sweetness to restrainOur angry Lord, and his great wrath allay.Felon is he who shall her love betrayWhich is pure truth, and falsehood cannot feign,While all the rest is lie and cheating play.
The feeble mouse, against the winter's cold,Garners the nuts and grain within his cell,While man goes groping, without sense to tellWhere to seek refuge against growing old.We seek it in the smoking mouth of Hell.With the poor beast our impotence compare!See him protect his life with utmost care,While us nor wit nor courage can compelTo save our souls, so foolish mad we are.The Devil doth in snares our life enfold;Four hooks has he with torments baited well;And first with Greed he casts a mighty spell,And then, to fill his nets, has Pride enrolled,And Luxury steers the boat, and fills the sail,And Perfidy controls and sets the snare;Thus the poor fish are brought to land, and thereMay God preserve us and the foe repel!Homage to him who saves us from despair!
To Mary Queen, who passes all compare,Go, little song! to her your sorrows tell!Nor Heaven nor Earth holds happiness so rare.
C'est d'Aucassins et de Nicolete.
Qui vauroit bons vers oirDel deport du viel caitiffDe deus biax enfans petisNicolete et Aucassins;Des grans paines qu'il soufriEt des proueces qu'il fistFor s'amie o le cler vis.Dox est li cans biax est li disEt cortois et bien asis.Nus hom n'est si esbahisTant dolans ni entreprisDe grant mal amaladisSe il l'oit ne soit garisEt de joie resbaudisTant par est dou-ce.
This is of Aucassins and Nicolette.
Whom would a good ballad pleaseBy the captive from o'er-seas,A sweet song in children's praise,Nicolette and Aucassins;What he bore for her caress,What he proved of his prowessFor his friend with the bright face?The song has charm, the tale has grace,And courtesy and good address.No man is in such distress,Such suffering or weariness,Sick with ever such sickness,But he shall, if he hear this,Recover all his happiness,So sweet it is!
This little thirteenth-century gem is called a "chante-fable," a story partly in prose, partly in verse, to be sung according to musical notation accompanying the words in the single manuscript known, and published in facsimile by Mr. F. W. Bourdillon at Oxford in 1896. Indeed, few poems, old or new, have in the last few years been more reprinted, translated, and discussed, than "Aucassins," yet the discussion lacks interest to the idle tourist, and tells him little. Nothing is known of the author or his date. The second line alone offers a hint, but nothing more. "Caitif" means in the first place a captive, and secondly any unfortunate or wretched man. Critics have liked to think that the word means here a captive to the Saracens, and that the poet, like Cervantes three or four hundred years later, may have been a prisoner to the infidels. What the critics can do, we can do. If liberties can be taken with impunity by scholars, we can take the liberty of supposing that the poet was a prisoner in the crusade of Coeur-de-Lion and Philippe- Auguste; that he had recovered his liberty, with his master, in 1194; and that he passed the rest of his life singing to the old Queen Eleanor or to Richard, at Chinon, and to the lords of all the chateaux in Guienne, Poitiers, Anjou, and Normandy, not to mention England. The living was a pleasant one, as the sunny atmosphere of the Southern poetry proves.
Dox est li cans; biax est li dis,Et cortois et bien asis.
The poet-troubadour who composed and recited "Aucassins" could not have been unhappy, but this is the affair of his private life, and not of ours. What rather interests us is his poetic motive, "courteous love," which gives the tale a place in the direct line between Christian of Troyes, Thibaut-le-Grand, and William of Lorris. Christian of Troyes died in 1175; at least he wrote nothing of a later date, so far as is certainly known. Richard Coeur-de-Lion died in 1199, very soon after the death of his half-sister Mary of Champagne. Thibaut-le-Grand was born in 1201. William of Lorris, who concluded the line of great "courteous" poets, died in 1260 or thereabouts. For our purposes, "Aucassins" comes between Christian of Troyes and William of Lorris; the trouvere or jogleor, who sang, was a "viel caitif" when the Chartres glass was set up, and the Charlemagne window designed, about 1210, or perhaps a little later. When one is not a professor, one has not the right to make inept guesses, and, when one is not a critic, one should not risk confusing a difficult question by baseless assumptions; but even a summer tourist may without offence visit his churches in the order that suits him best; and, for our tour, "Aucassins" follows Christian and goes hand in hand with Blondel and the chatelain de Coucy, as the most exquisite expression of "courteous love." As one of "Aucassins'" German editors says in his introduction: "Love is the medium through which alone the hero surveys the world around him, and for which he contemns everything that the age prized: knightly honour; deeds of arms; father and mother; hell, and even heaven; but the mere promise by his father of a kiss from Nicolette inspires him to superhuman heroism; while the old poet sings and smiles aside to his audience as though he wished them to understand that Aucassins, a foolish boy, must not be judged quite seriously, but that, old as he was himself, he was just as foolish about Nicolette."
Aucassins was the son of the Count of Beaucaire. Nicolette was a young girl whom the Viscount of Beaucaire had redeemed as a captive of the Saracens, and had brought up as a god-daughter in his family. Aucassins fell in love with Nicolette, and wanted to marry her. The action turned on marriage, for, to the Counts of Beaucaire, as to other counts, not to speak of kings, high alliance was not a matter of choice but of necessity, without which they could not defend their lives, let alone their counties; and, to make Aucassins' conduct absolutely treasonable, Beaucaire was at that time surrounded and besieged, and the Count, Aucassins' father, stood in dire need of his son's help. Aucassins refused to stir unless he could have Nicolette. What were honours to him if Nicolette were not to share them. "S'ele estait empereris de Colstentinoble u d'Alemaigne u roine de France u d'Engletere, si aroit il asses peu en li, tant est france et cortoise et de bon aire et entecie de toutes bones teces." To be empress of "Colstentinoble" would be none too good for her, so stamped is she with nobility and courtesy and high-breeding and all good qualities.
So the Count, after a long struggle, sent for his Viscount and threatened to have Nicolette burned alive, and the Viscount himself treated no better, if he did not put a stop to the affair; and the Viscount shut up Nicolette, and remonstrated with Aucassins: "Marry a king's daughter, or a count's! leave Nicolette alone, or you will never see Paradise!" This at once gave Aucassins the excuse for a charming tirade against Paradise, for which, a century or two later, he would properly have been burned together with Nicolette:—
En paradis qu'ai je a faire? Je n'i quier entrer mais que j'aie Nicolete, ma tres douce amie, que j'aim tant. C'en paradis ne vont fors tex gens con je vous dirai. Il i vont ci viel prestre et cil vieil clop et cil manke, qui tote jour et tote nuit cropent devant ces autex et en ces vies cruutes, et ci a ces vies capes ereses et a ces vies tatereles vestues, qui sont nu et decauc et estrumele, qui moeurent de faim et d'esci et de froid et de mesaises. Icil vont en paradis; aveuc ciax n'ai jou que faire; mais en infer voil jou aler. Car en infer vont li bel clerc et li bel cevalier qui sont mort as tornois et as rices gueres, et li bien sergant et li franc home. Aveuc ciax voil jou aler. Et si vont les beles dames cortoises que eles ont ii amis ou iii avec leurs barons. Et si va li ors et li agens et li vairs et li gris; et si i vont herpeor et jogleor et li roi del siecle. Avec ciax voil jou aler mais que j'aie Nicolete, ma tres douce amie, aveuc moi.
In Paradise what have I to do? I do not care to go there unless I may have Nicolette, my very sweet friend, whom I love so much. For to Paradise goes no one but such people as I will tell you of. There go old priests and old cripples and the maimed, who all day and all night crouch before altars and in old crypts, and are clothed with old worn-out capes and old tattered rags; who are naked and footbare and sore; who die of hunger and want and misery. These go to Paradise; with them I have nothing to do; but to Hell I am willing to go. For, to Hell go the fine scholars and the fair knights who die in tournies and in glorious wars; and the good men-at-arms and the well-born. With them I will gladly go. And there go the fair courteous ladies whether they have two or three friends besides their lords. And the gold and silver go there, and the ermines and sables; and there go the harpers and jongleurs, and the kings of the world. With these will I go, if only I may have Nicolette, my very sweet friend, with me.
Three times, in these short extracts, the word "courteous" has already appeared. The story itself is promised as "courteous"; Nicolette is "courteous"; and the ladies who are not to go to heaven are "courteous." Aucassins is in the full tide of courtesy, and evidently a professional, or he never would have claimed a place for harpers and jongleurs with kings and chevaliers in the next world. The poets of "courteous love" showed as little interest in religion as the poets of the eleventh century had shown for it in their poems of war. Aucassins resembled Christian of Troyes in this, and both of them resembled Thibaut, while William of Lorris went beyond them all. The literature of the "siecle" was always unreligious, from the "Chanson de Roland" to the "Tragedy of Hamlet"; to be "papelard" was unworthy of a chevalier; the true knight of courtesy made nothing of defying the torments of hell, as he defied the lance of a rival, the frowns of society, the threats of parents or the terrors of magic; the perfect, gentle, courteous lover thought of nothing but his love. Whether the object of his love were Nicolette of Beaucaire or Blanche of Castile, Mary of Champagne or Mary of Chartres, was a detail which did not affect the devotion of his worship.
So Nicolette, shut up in a vaulted chamber, leaned out at the marble window and sang, while Aucassins, when his father promised that he should have a kiss from Nicolette, went out to make fabulous slaughter of the enemy; and when his father broke the promise, shut himself up in his chamber, and also sang; and the action went on by scenes and interludes, until, one night, Nicolette let herself down from the window, by the help of sheets and towels, into the garden, and, with a natural dislike of wetting her skirts which has delighted every hearer or reader from that day to this, "prist se vesture a l'une main devant et a l'autre deriere si s'escorca por le rousee qu'ele vit grande sor l'erbe si s'en ala aval le gardin"; she raised her skirts with one hand in front and the other behind, for the dew which she saw heavy on the grass, and went off down the garden, to the tower where Aucassins was locked up, and sang to him through a crack in the masonry, and gave him a lock of her hair, and they talked till the friendly night-watch came by and warned her by a sweetly-sung chant, that she had better escape. So she bade farewell to Aucassins, and went on to a breach in the city wall, and she looked through it down into the fosse which was very deep and very steep. So she sang to herself—
Peres rois de maesteOr ne sai quel part aler.Se je vois u gaut rameJa me mengeront li leLi lions et li senglerDont il i a a plente.
Father, King of Majesty!Now I know not where to flee.If I seek the forest free,Then the lions will eat me,Wolves and wild boars terribly,Of which plenty there there be.
The lions were a touch of poetic licence, even for Beaucaire, but the wolves and wild boars were real enough; yet Nicolette feared even them less than she feared the Count, so she slid down what her audience well knew to be a most dangerous and difficult descent, and reached the bottom with many wounds in her hands and feet, "et san en sali bien en xii lius"; so that blood was drawn in a dozen places, and then she climbed up the other side, and went off bravely into the depths of the forest; an uncanny thing to do by night, as you can still see.
Then followed a pastoral, which might be taken from the works of another poet of the same period, whose acquaintance no one can neglect to make—Adam de la Halle, a Picard, of Arras. Adam lived, it is true, fifty years later than the date imagined for Aucassins, but his shepherds and shepherdesses are not so much like, as identical with, those of the Southern poet, and all have so singular an air of life that the conventional courteous knight fades out beside them. The poet, whether bourgeois, professional, noble, or clerical, never much loved the peasant, and the peasant never much loved him, or any one else. The peasant was a class by himself, and his trait, as a class, was suspicion of everybody and all things, whether material, social, or divine. Naturally he detested his lord, whether temporal or spiritual, because the seigneur and the priest took his earnings, but he was never servile, though a serf; he was far from civil; he was commonly gross. He was cruel, but not more so than his betters; and his morals were no worse. The object of oppression on all sides,—the invariable victim, whoever else might escape,—the French peasant, as a class, held his own—and more. In fact, he succeeded in plundering Church, Crown, nobility, and bourgeoisie, and was the only class in French history that rose steadily in power and well-being, from the time of the crusades to the present day, whatever his occasional suffering may have been; and, in the thirteenth century, he was suffering. When Nicolette, on the morning after her escape, came upon a group of peasants in the forest, tending the Count's cattle, she had reason to be afraid of them, but instead they were afraid of her. They thought at first that she was a fairy. When they guessed the riddle, they kept the secret, though they risked punishment and lost the chance of reward by protecting her. Worse than this, they agreed, for a small present, to give a message to Aucassins if he should ride that way.
Aucassins was not very bright, but when he got out of prison after Nicolette's escape, he did ride out, at his friends' suggestion, and tried to learn what had become of her. Passing through the woods he came upon the same group of shepherds and shepherdesses:—
Esmeres et Martinet, Fruelins et Johannes, Robecons etAubries,—
who might have been living in the Forest of Arden, so like were they to the clowns of Shakespeare. They were singing of Nicolette and her present, and the cakes and knives and flute they would buy with it. Aucassins jumped to the bait they offered him; and they instantly began to play him as though he were a trout:—
"Bel enfant, dix vos i ait!"
"Dix vos benie!" fait cil qui fu plus enparles des autres.
"Bel enfant," fait il, "redites le cancon que vos disiez ore!"
"Nous n'i dirons," fait cil qui plus fu enparles des autres. "Dehait ore qui por vos i cantera, biax sire!"
"Bel enfant!" fait Aucassins, "enne me connissies vos?"
"Oil! nos savions bien que vos estes Aucassins, nos damoisiax, mais nos ne somes mie a vos, ains somes au conte."
"Bel enfant, si feres, je vos en pri!"
"Os, por le cuer be!" fait cil. "Por quoi canteroie je por vos, s'il ne me seoit! Quant il n'a si rice home en cest pais sans le cors le conte Garin s'il trovait mes bues ne mes vaces ne mes brebis en ses pres n'en sen forment qu'il fust mie tant hardis por les es a crever qu'il les en ossast cacier. Et por quoi canteroie je por vos s'il ne me seoit?"
"Se dix vos ait, bel enfant, si feres! et tenes x sous que j'ai ci en une borse!"
"God bless you, fair child!" said Aucassins.
"God be with you!" replied the one who talked best.
"Fair child!" said he, "repeat the song you were just singing."
"We won't!" replied he who talked best among them. "Bad luck to him who shall sing for you, good sir!"
"Fair child," said Aucassins, "do you know me?"
"Yes! we know very well that you are Aucassins, our young lord; but we are none of yours; we belong to the Count."
"Fair child, indeed you'll do it, I pray you!"
"Listen, for love of God!" said he. "Why should I sing for you if it does not suit me? when there is no man so powerful in this country, except Count Garin, if he found my oxen or my cows or my sheep in his pasture or his close, would not rather risk losing his eyes than dare to turn them out! and why should I sing for you, if it does not suit me!"
"So God help you, good child, indeed you will do it! and take these ten sous that I have here in my purse."
"Sire les deniers prenderons nos, mais je ne vos canterai mie, car j'en ai jure. Mais je le vos conterai se vos voles."
"De par diu!" faits Aucassins. "Encore aim je mix center que nient."
"Sire, the money we will take, but I'll not sing to you, for I've sworn it. But I will tell it you, if you like."
"For God's sake!" said Aucassins; "better telling than nothing!"
Ten sous was no small gift! twenty sous was the value of a strong ox. The poet put a high money-value on the force of love, but he set a higher value on it in courtesy. These boors were openly insolent to their young lord, trying to extort money from him, and threatening him with telling his father; but they were in their right, and Nicolette was in their power. At heart they meant Aucassins well, but they were rude and grasping, and the poet used them in order to show how love made the true lover courteous even to clowns. Aucassins' gentle courtesy is brought out by the boors' greed, as the colours in the window were brought out and given their value by a bit of blue or green. The poet, having got his little touch of colour rightly placed, let the peasants go. "Cil qui fu plus enparles des autres," having been given his way and his money, told Aucassins what he knew of Nicolette and her message; so Aucassins put spurs to his horse and cantered into the forest, singing:—
Se diu plaist le pere fortJe vos reverai encoreSuer, douce a-mie!
So please God, great and strong,I will find you now ere long,Sister, sweet friend!
But the peasant had singular attraction for the poet. Whether the character gave him a chance for some clever mimicry, which was one of his strong points as a story-teller: or whether he wanted to treat his subjects, like the legendary windows, in pairs; or whether he felt that the forest-scene specially amused his audience, he immediately introduced a peasant of another class, much more strongly coloured, or deeply shadowed. Every one in the audience was—and, for that matter, still would be—familiar with the great forests, the home of half the fairy and nursery tales of Europe, still wild enough and extensive enough to hide in, although they have now comparatively few lions, and not many wolves or wild boars or serpents such as Nicolette feared. Every one saw, without an effort, the young damoiseau riding out with his hound or hawk, looking for game; the lanes under the trees, through the wood, or the thick underbrush before lanes were made; the herdsmen watching their herds, and keeping a sharp look-out for wolves; the peasant seeking lost cattle; the black kiln-men burning charcoal; and in the depths of the rocks or swamps or thickets—the outlaw. Even now, forests like Rambouillet, or Fontainebleau or Compiegne are enormous and wild; one can see Aucassins breaking his way through thorns and branches in search of Nicolette, tearing his clothes and wounding himself "en xl lius u en xxx," until evening approached, and he began to weep for disappointment:—
Il esgarda devant lui enmi la voie si vit un vallet tei que je vos dirai. Grans estoit et mervellex et lais et hidex. Il avoit une grande hure plus noire qu'une carbouclee, et avoit plus de planne paume entre ii ex, et avoit unes grandes joes et un grandisme nez plat, et une grans narines lees et unes grosses levres plus rouges d'unes carbounees, et uns grans dens gaunes et lais et estoit caucies d'uns housiax et d'uns sollers de buef fretes de tille dusque deseure le genol et estoit afules d'une cape a ii envers si estoit apoiies sor une grande macue. Aucassins s'enbati sor lui s'eut grand paor quant il le sorvit…
"Baix frere, dix ti ait!"
"Dix vos benie!" fait cil. "Se dix t'ait, que fais tu ilec?"
"A vos que monte?" fait cil.
"Nient!" fait Aucassins; "je nel vos demant se por bien non."
"Mais pour quoi ploures vos?" fait cil, "et faites si fait doel? Certes se j'estoie ausi rices hom que vos estes, tos li mons ne me feroit mie plorer."
"Ba! me conissies vos!" fait Aucassins.
"Oie! je sai bien que vos estes Aucassins li fix le conte, et se vos me dites por quoi vos plores je vos dirai que je fac ici."
As he looked before him along the way he saw a man such as I will tell you. Tall he was, and menacing, and ugly, and hideous. He had a great mane blacker than charcoal and had more than a full palm- width between his two eyes, and had big cheeks, and a huge flat nose and great broad nostrils, and thick lips redder than raw beef, and large ugly yellow teeth, and was shod with hose and leggings of raw hide laced with bark cord to above the knee, and was muffled in a cloak without lining, and was leaning on a great club. Aucassins came upon him suddenly and had great fear when he saw him.
"Fair brother, good day!" said he.
"God bless you!" said the other.
"As God help you, what do you here?"
"What is that to you?" said the other.
"Nothing!" said Aucassins; "I ask only from good-will."
"But why are you crying!" said the other, "and mounring so loud? Sure, if I were as great a man as you are, nothing on earth would make me cry."
"Bah! you know me?" said Aucassins.
"Yes, I know very well that you are Aucassins, the count's son; and if you will tell me what you are crying for, I will tell you what I am doing here."
Aucassins seemed to think this an equal bargain. All damoiseaux were not as courteous as Aucassins, nor all "varlets" as rude as his peasants; we shall see how the young gentlemen of Picardy treated the peasantry for no offence at all; but Aucassins carried a softer, Southern temper in a happier climate, and, with his invariable gentle courtesy, took no offence at the familiarity with which the ploughman treated him. Yet he dared not tell the truth, so he invented, on the spur of the moment, an excuse;—he has lost, he said, a beautiful white hound. The peasant hooted—
"Os!" fait cil; "por le cuer que cil sires eut en sen ventre! que vos plorastes por un cien puant! Mal dehait ait qui ja mais vos prisera quant il n'a si rice home en ceste tere se vos peres len mandoit x u xv u xx qu'il ne les envoyast trop volontiers et s'en esteroit trop lies. Mais je dois plorer et dol faire?"
"Et tu de quoi frere?"
"Sire je lo vos dirai. J'estoie liues a un rice vilain si cacoie se carue. iiii bues i avoit. Or a iii jors qu il m'avint une grande malaventure que je perdi le mellor de mes bues Roget le mellor de me carue. Si le vois querant. Si ne mengai ne ne bue iii jors a passes. Si n'os aler a le vile c'on me metroit en prison que je ne l'ai de quoi saure. De tot l'avoir du monde n'ai je plus vaillant que vos vees sor le cors de mi. Une lasse mere avoie, si n'avoit plus vaillant que une keutisele, si h a on sacie de desous le dos si gist a pur l'estrain, si m'en poise asses plus que denu. Car avoirs va et viaent; se j'ai or perdu je gaaignerai une autre fois si sorrai mon buef quant je porrai, ne ja por cien n'en plorerai. Et vos plorastes por un cien de longaigne! Mal dehait ait qui mais vos prisera!"
"Certes tu es de bon confort, biax frere! que benois sois tu! Et que valoit tes bues!"
"Sire xx sous m'en demande on, je n'en puis mie abatre une seule maille."
"Or, tien" fait Aucassins, "xx que j'ai ci en me borse, si sol ten buef!"
"Listen!" said he, "By the heart God had in his body, that you should cry for a stinking dog! Bad luck to him who ever prizes you! When there is no man in this land so great, if your father sent to him for ten or fifteen or twenty but would fetch them very gladly, and be only too pleased. But I ought to cry and mourn."
"And—why you, brother?"
"Sir, I will tell you. I was hired out to a rich farmer to drive his plough. There were four oxen. Now three days ago I had a great misfortune, for I lost the best of my oxen, Roget, the best of my team. I am looking to find him. I've not eaten or drunk these three days past. I dare n't go to the town, for they would put me in prison as I've nothing to pay with. In all the world I've not the worth of anything but what you see on my body I've a poor old mother who owned nothing but a feather mattress, and they've dragged it from under her back so she lies on the bare straw, and she troubles me more than myself. For riches come and go if I lose to day, I gain to-morrow; I will pay for my ox when I can, and will not cry for that. And you cry for a filthy dog! Bad luck to him who ever thinks well of you!"
"Truly, you counsel well, good brother! God bless you! And what was your ox worth?"
"Sir, they ask me twenty sous for it. I cannot beat them down a single centime."
"Here are twenty," said Aucassins, "that I have in my purse! Pay for your ox!"
"Sire!" fait il, "grans mercies! et dix vos laist trover ce que vox queres!"
"Sir!" said he; "many thanks! and Go! grant you find what you seek!"
The little episode was thrown in without rhyme or reason to the rapid emotion of the love-story, as though the jongleur were showing his own cleverness and humour, at the expense of his hero, as jongleurs had a way of doing; but he took no such liberties with his heroine. While Aucassins tore through the thickets on horseback, crying aloud, Nicolette had built herself a little hut in the depths of the forest:—
Ele prist des flors de lisEt de l'erbe du garrisEt de le foille autresi;Une belle loge en fist,Ainques tant gente ne vi.Jure diu qui ne mentiSe par la vient AucassinsEt il por l'amor de liNe si repose un petitJa ne sera ses amisN'ele s'a-mie.
So she twined the lilies' flower,Roofed with leafy branches o'er,Made of it a lovely bower,With the freshest grass for floorSuch as never mortal saw.By God's Verity, she swore,Should Aucassins pass her door,And not stop for love of her,To repose a moment there,He should be her love no more,Nor she his dear!
So night came on, and Nicolette went to sleep, a little distance away from her hut. Aucassins at last came by, and dismounted, spraining his shoulder in doing it. Then he crept into the little hut, and lying on his back, looked up through the leaves to the moon, and sang:—
Estoilete, je te voi,Que la lune trait a soi.Nicolete est aveuc toi,M'amiete o le blond poil.Je quid que dix le veut avoirPor la lumiere de soirQue par li plus clere soit.Vien, amie, je te proie!Ou monter vauroie droit,Que que fust du recaoir.Que fuisse lassus o toiJa te baiseroi estroit.Se j'estoie fix a roiS'afferies vos bien a moiSuer douce amie!
I can see you, little star,That the moon draws through the air.Nicolette is where you are,My own love with the blonde hair.I think God must want her nearTo shine down upon us hereThat the evening be more clear.Come down, dearest, to my prayer,Or I climb up where you are!Though I fell, I would not care.If I once were with you thereI would kiss you closely, dear!If a monarch's son I wereYou should all my kingdom share,Sweet friend, sister!
How Nicolette heard him sing, and came to him and rubbed his shoulder and dressed his wounds as though he were a child; and how in the morning they rode away together, like Tennyson's "Sleeping Beauty,"—
O'er the hills and far awayBeyond their utmost purple rim,Beyond the night, beyond the day,
singing as they rode, the story goes on to tell or to sing in verse—
Aucassins, li biax, li blons,Li gentix, It amorous,Est issous del gaut parfont,Entre ses bras ses amorsDevant lui sor son arcon.Les ex li baise et le front,Et le bouce et le menton.Elle l'a mis a raison."Aucassins, biax amis dox,"En quel tere en irons nous?""Douce amie, que sai jou?"Moi ne caut u nous aillons,"En forest u en destor"Mais que je soie aveuc vous."Passent les vaus et les mons,Et les viles et les borsA la mer vinrent au jor,Si descendent u sablonLes le rivage.
Aucassins, the brave, the fair,Courteous knight and gentle lover,From the forest dense came forth;In his arms his love he boreOn his saddle-bow before;Her eyes he kisses and her mouth,And her forehead and her chin.She brings him back to earth again:"Aucassins, my love, my own,"To what country shall we turn?""Dearest angel, what say you?"I care nothing where we go,"In the forest or outside,"While you on my saddle ride."So they pass by hill and dale,And the city, and the town,Till they reach the morning pale,And on sea-sands set them down,Hard by the shore.
There we will leave them, for their further adventures have not much to do with our matter. Like all the romans, or nearly all, "Aucassins" is singularly pure and refined. Apparently the ladies of courteous love frowned on coarseness and allowed no licence. Their power must have been great, for the best romans are as free from grossness as the "Chanson de Roland" itself, or the church glass, or the illuminations in the manuscripts; and as long as the power of the Church ruled good society, this decency continued. As far as women were concerned, they seem always to have been more clean than the men, except when men painted them in colours which men liked best.
Perhaps society was actually cleaner in the thirteenth century than in the sixteenth, as Saint Louis was more decent than Francis I, and as the bath was habitual in the twelfth century and exceptional at the Renaissance. The rule held good for the bourgeoisie as well as among the dames cortoises. Christian and Thibaut, "Aucassins" and the "Roman de la Rose," may have expressed only the tastes of high- born ladies, but other poems were avowedly bourgeois, and among the bourgeois poets none was better than Adam de la Halle. Adam wrote also for the court, or at least for Robert of Artois, Saint Louis's nephew, whom he followed to Naples in 1284, but his poetry was as little aristocratic as poetry could well be, and most of it was cynically—almost defiantly—middle-class, as though the weavers of Arras were his only audience, and recognized him and the objects of his satire in every verse. The bitter personalities do not concern us, but, at Naples, to amuse Robert of Artois and his court, Adam composed the first of French comic operas, which had an immense success, and, as a pastoral poem, has it still. The Idyll of Arras was a singular contrast to the Idyll of Beaucaire, but the social value was the same in both; Robin and Marion were a pendant to Aucassins and Nicolette; Robin was almost a burlesque on Aucassins, while Marion was a Northern, energetic, intelligent, pastoral Nicolette.
"Li Gieus de Robin et de Marion" had little or no plot. Adam strung together, on a thread of dialogue and by a group of suitable figures, a number of the favourite songs of his time, followed by the favourite games, and ending with a favourite dance, the "tresca." The songs, the games, and the dances do not concern us, but the dialogue runs along prettily, with an air of Flemish realism, like a picture of Teniers, as unlike that of "courtoisie" as Teniers was to Guido Reni. Underneath it all a tone of satire made itself felt, good-natured enough, but directed wholly against the men.
The scene opens on Marion tending her sheep, and singing the pretty air: "Robin m'aime, Robin ma'a," after which enters a chevalier or esquire, on horseback, and sings: "Je me repairoie du tournoiement." Then follows a dialogue between the chevalier and Marion, with no other object than to show off the charm of Marion against the masculine defects of the knight. Being, like most squires, somewhat slow of ideas in conversation with young women, the gentleman began by asking for sport for his falcon. Has she seen any duck down by the river?
Mais veis tu par chi devantVers ceste riviere nul ane?
"Ane," it seems, was the usual word for wild duck, the falcon's prey, and Marion knew it as well as he, but she chose to misunderstand him:—
C'est une bete qui recane;J'en vis ier iii sur che quemin,Tous quarchies aler au moulin.Est che chou que vous demandes?
"It is a beast that brays; I saw three yesterday on the road, all with loads going to the mill. Is that what you ask?" That is not what the squire has asked, and he is conscious that Marion knows it, but he tries again. If she has not seen a duck, perhaps she has seen a heron:—
Hairons, sire? par me foi, non!Je n'en vi nesun puis quaremeQue j'en vi mengier chies dame EmeMe taiien qui sorit ches brebis.
"Heron, sir! by my faith, no! I've not seen one since Lent when I saw some eaten at my grandmother's—Dame Emma who owns these sheep." "Hairons," it seems, meant also herring, and this wilful misunderstanding struck the chevalier as carrying jest too far:—
Par foi! or suis j'ou esbaubis!N'ainc mais je ne fui si gabes!
"On my word, I am silenced! never in my life was I so chaffed!" Marion herself seems to think her joke a little too evident, for she takes up the conversation in her turn, only to conclude that she likes Robin better than she does the knight; he is gayer, and when he plays his musette he starts the whole village dancing. At this, the squire makes a declaration of love with such energy as to spur his horse almost over her:—
Aimi, sirel ostez vo cheval!A poi que il ne m'a blechie.Li Robin ne regiete mieQuand je voie apres se karue.
"Aimi!" is an exclamation of alarm, real or affected: "Dear me, sir! take your horse away! he almost hurt me! Robin's horse never rears when I go behind his plough!" Still the knight persists, and though Marion still tells him to go away, she asks his name, which he says is Aubert, and so gives her the catchword for another song:—"Vos perdes vo paine, sire Aubert!"—which ends the scene with a duo. The second scene begins with a duo of Marion and Robin, followed by her giving a softened account of the chevalier's behaviour, and then they lunch on bread and cheese and apples, and more songs follow, till she sends him to get Baldwin and Walter and Peronette and the pipers, for a dance. In his absence the chevalier returns and becomes very pressing in his attentions, which gives her occasion to sing:-