FROISSART.
Je fuis adont infourme par le seigneur d"Estonnevort, et me dist que il vey, et aussi firent plusieurs, quant l"oriflambe fut desploiee et la brune se chey, ung blanc coulon voller et faire plusieurs volz par dessus la baniere du roy; et quant il eut a.s.sez vole, et que on se deubt combatre et a.s.sambler aux ennemis, il se print a seoir sur l"une des bannieres du roy; dont on tint ce a grant signiffance de bien. Or approchierent les Flamens et commenchierent a jetter et a traire de bombardes et de canons et de gros quarreaulx empenez d"arain; ainsi se commenca la bataille. Et en ot le roy de France et ses gens le premier encontre, qui leur fut moult dur; ear ces Flamens, qui descendoient orgueilleus.e.m.e.nt et de grant voulente, venoient roit et dur, et boutoient en venant de l"espaule et de la poitrine ainsi comme senglers tous foursenez, et estoient si fort entrelachies tous ensemble qu"on ne les povoit ouvrir ne desrompre. La fuirent du coste des Francois par le trait des canons, des bombardes et des arbalestres premierement mort: le seigneur de Waurin, baneret, Morelet de Halwin et Jacques d"Ere. Et adont fut la bataille du roy reculee; mais l"avantgarde et l"arrieregarde a deux lez pa.s.serent oultre et enclourent ces Flamens, et les misrent a l"estroit. Je vous diray comment sur ces deux eles gens d"armes les commencierent a pousser de leurs roides lances a longs fers et durs de Bourdeaulx, qui leur pa.s.soient ces cottes de maille tout oultre et les perchoient en char; dont ceulx qui estoient attains et navrez de ces fers se restraindoient pour eschiever les horons; ear jamais ou amender le peussent ne se boutoient avant pour eulx faire destruire. La les misrent ces gens d"armes a tel destroit qu"ilz ne se scavoient ne povoient aidier ne ravoir leurs bras ne leurs planchons pour ferir ne eulz deffendre.
La perdoient les plusieurs force et alaine, et la tresbuchoient l"un sur l"autre, et se estindoient et moroient sans coup ferir. La fut Phelippe d"Artevelle encloz et pouse de glaive et abatu, et gens de Gand qui l"amoient et gardoient grant plente atterrez entour luy. Quant le page dudit Phelippe vey la mesadventure venir sur les leurs, il estoit bien monte sur bon coursier, si se party et laissa son maistre, ear il ne le povoit aidier; et retourna vers Courtray pour revenir a Gand.
(A)insi fut faitte et a.s.samblee celle bataille; et lors que des deux costez les Flamens furent astrains et encloz, ilz ne pa.s.serent plus avant, ear ilz ne se povoient aidier.
Adont se remist la bataille du roy en vigeur, qui avoit de commencement ung pet.i.t bransle. La entendoient gens d"armes a abatre Flamens en grant nombre, et avoient les plusieurs haches acerees, dont ilz rompoient ces bachinets et eschervelloient testes; et les aucuns plommees, dont ilz donnoient si grans horrons, qu"ilz les abatoient a terre. A paines estoient Flamens cheuz, quant pillars venoient qui entre les gens d"armes se boutoient et portoient grandes coutilles, dont ilz les partuoient; ne nulle pitie n"en avoient non plus que se ce fuissent chiens. La estoit le clicquetis sur ces bacinets si grant et si hault, d"espees, de haches, et de plommees, que l"en n"y ouoit goutte pour la noise. Et ou dire que, se tous les heaumiers de Paris et de Brouxelles estoient ensemble, leur mestier faisant, ilz n"eussent pas fait si grant noise comme faisoient les combatans et les ferans sur ces testes et sur ces bachinets.
La ne s"espargnoient point chevalliers ne escuers ainchois mettoient la main a l"euvre par grant voulente, et plus les ungs que les autres; si en y ot aucuns qui s"avancerent et bouterent en la presse trop avant; ear ilz y furent encloz et estains, et par especal messire Los de Cousant, ung chevallier de Berry, et messire Fleton de Revel, filz au seigneur de Revel; mais encoires en y eut des autres, dont ce fut dommage: mais si grosse bataille, dont celle la fut, ou tant avoit de pueple, ne se povoit parfurnir et au mieulx venir pour les victorens, que elle ne couste grandement.
Car jeunes chevalliers et escuers qui desirent les armes se avancent voulentiers pour leur honneur et pour acquerre loenge; et la presse estoit la si grande et le dangier si perilleux pour ceulx qui estoient enclos ou abatus, que se on n"avoit trop bonne ayde, on ne se povoit relever. Par ce party y eut des Francoiz mors et estains aucuns; mais plente ne fut ce mie; ear quant il venoit a point, ilz aidoient l"un l"autre. La eut ung molt grant nombre de Flamens occis, dont les tas des mors estoient haulx et longs ou la bataille avoit este; on ne vey jamais si peu de sang yssir a tant de mors.
Quant les Flamens qui estoient derriere veirent que ceulx devant fondoient et cheoient l"un sus l"autre et que ilz estoient tous desconfis, ilz s"esbahirent et jetterent leurs plancons par terre et leurs armures et se misrent a la fuitte vers Courtray et ailleurs. Ilz n"avoient cure que pour eulx mettre a sauvete. Et Franchois et Bretons apres, quy les cha.s.soient en fossez et en buissons, en aunois et an mares et bruieres, cy dix, cy vingt, cy trente, et la les recombatoient de rechief, et la les occoient, se ilz n"estoient les plus fors. Si en y eut ung moult grant nombre de mors en la chace entre le lieu de la bataille et Courtray, ou ilz se retraioient a saulf garant. Ceste bataille advint sur le Mont d"Or entre Courtray et Rosebeque en l"an de grace nostre seigneur, mil iij"c. iiij"xx. et II., le jeudi devant le samedi de l"advent, le xxvij"e.
jour de novembre, et estoit pour lors le roy Charles de France ou xiiij"e. an de son eage.
FOOTNOTES:
[131] The chronicle of the pseudo-Turpin is of little real importance in the history of French literature, because it is admitted to have been written in Latin. The busy idleness of critics has however prompted them to discuss at great length the question whether the _Chanson de Roland_ may not possibly have been composed from this chronicle. The facts are these. Tilpin or Turpin was actually archbishop of Rheims from 753-794, but n.o.body pretends that the chronicle going under his name is authentic. All that is certain is that it is not later than 1165, and that it is probably not earlier than the middle, or at most the beginning, of the eleventh century, while the part of it which is more particularly in question is of the end of that century. _Roland_ is almost certainly of the middle at latest. Curiosity on this point may be gratified by consulting M. Gaston Paris, _De pseudo-Turpino_, Paris, 1865, or M. Leon Gautier, _Epopees Francaises_, Paris, 1878. But, from the literary point of view, it is sufficient to say that, while _Turpin_ is of the very smallest literary merit, _Roland_ is among the capital works of the middle ages.
[132] Ed. N. de Wailly. Paris, 1874.
[133] Ed. P. Paris. 2 vols., 1879-80. It is characteristic of the middle ages that this work usually bore the t.i.tle of _Roman d"Eracle_, for no other reason than that the name of Heraclius occurs in the first sentence.
[134] Ed. N. de Wailly. Paris, 1874. Besides the _Histoire de St.
Louis_, Joinville has left an interesting _Credo_, a brief religious manual written much earlier in his life.
[135] Ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove. 20 vols., Brussels. Ed. S. Luce, Paris, in course of publication. The edition of Buchon, 3 vols., Paris, 1855, is still the best for general use. Froissart"s poems give many biographical details which are interesting, but unimportant. He wandered all his life from court to court, patronised and pensioned by kings, queens, and princes. He was successively _cure_ of Lestines and canon of Chimay. In early life he was much in England, being specially patronised by Edward III. and Philippa.
[136] _Old Mortality_, chap. 35.
[137] Ed. Buchon. Paris, 1858.
[138] Chastellain has been fortunate, like most Flemish writers, in being excellently and completely edited (by M. Kervyn de Lettenhove. 8 vols., Brussels).
[139] Ed. Michaud et Poujoulat.
[140] Ed. Michaud et Poujoulat.
[141] Ed. Michaud et Poujoulat, in whose collection most of the many authors here mentioned will be also found.
CHAPTER XII.
MISCELLANEOUS PROSE.
[Sidenote: General use of Prose.]
It was natural, and indeed necessary, that, when the use of prose as an allowable vehicle for literary composition was once understood and established, it should gradually but rapidly supersede the more troublesome and far less appropriate form of verse. Accordingly we find that, from the beginning of the thirteenth century, the amount of prose literature is constantly on the increase. It happens, however, or, to speak more precisely, it follows that this miscellaneous prose literature is of much less importance and of much less interest than the contemporary and kindred literature in verse. For in the nature of things much of it was occupied with what may be called the journey-work of literature,--the stuff which, unless there be some special attraction in its form, grows obsolete, or retains a merely antiquarian interest in the course of time. There was, moreover, still among the chief patrons of literature a preference for verse which diverted the brightest spirits to the practice of that form. Yet again, the best prose composition of the middle ages, with the exception of a few works of fiction, is to be found in its chronicles, and these have already been noticed. A review, therefore, much less minute in scale than that which in the first ten chapters of this book has been given to the mediaeval poetry of France, will suffice for its mediaeval prose, and such a review will appropriately close the survey of the literature of the middle ages.
[Sidenote: Prose Sermons. St. Bernard.]
[Sidenote: Maurice de Sully.]
[Sidenote: Later Preachers. Gerson.]
It has already been pointed out in the first chapter that doc.u.mentary evidence exists to prove the custom of preaching in French (or at least in _lingua romana_) at a very early date. It is not, however, till many centuries after the date of Mummolinus, that there is any trace of regularly written vernacular discourses. When these appear in the twelfth century the Provencal dialects appear to have the start of French proper. Whether the forty-four prose sermons of St. Bernard which exist were written by him in French, or were written in Latin and translated, is a disputed point. The most reasonable opinion seems to be that they were translated, but it is uncertain whether at the beginning of the thirteenth or the middle of the twelfth century. However this may be, the question of written French sermons in the twelfth century does not depend on that of St. Bernard"s authorship. Maurice de Sully, who presided over the See of Paris from 1160 to 1195, has left a considerable number of sermons which exist in ma.n.u.scripts of very different dialects. Perhaps it may not be illegitimate to conclude from this, that at the time such written sermons were not very common, and that preachers of different districts were glad to borrow them for their own use. These also are thought to have been first written in Latin and then translated. But whether Maurice de Sully was a pioneer or not, he was very quickly followed by others. In the following century the number of preachers whose vernacular work has been preserved is very large; the increase being, beyond all doubt, partially due to the foundation of the two great preaching orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic. The existing literature of this cla.s.s, dating from the thirteenth, the fourteenth, and the early fifteenth centuries, is enormous, but the remarks made at the beginning of this chapter apply to it fully. Its interest is almost wholly antiquarian, and not in any sense literary. Distinguished names indeed occur in the catalogue of preachers, but, until we come to the extreme verge of the mediaeval period proper, hardly one of what may be called the first importance. The struggle between the Burgundian and Orleanist, or Armagnac parties, and the ecclesiastical squabbles of the Great Schism, produced some figures of greater interest. Such are Jean Pet.i.t, a furious partisan, who went so far as to excuse the murder of the Duke of Orleans, and Jean Charlier, or Gerson, one of the most respectable and considerable names of the later mediaeval literature.
Gerson was born in 1363, at a village of the same name in Lorraine. He early entered the College de Navarre, and distinguished himself under Peter d"Ailly, the most famous of the later nominalists. He became Chancellor of the University, received a living in Flanders, and for many years preached in the most constantly attended churches of Paris.
He represented the University at the Council of Constance, and, becoming obnoxious to the Burgundian party, sought refuge with one of his brothers at Lyons, where he is said to have taught little children. He died in 1429. Gerson, it should perhaps be added, is one of the numerous candidates (but one of the least likely) for the honour of having written the _Imitation_. He concerns us here only as the author of numerous French sermons. His work in this kind is very characteristic of the time. Less mixed with burlesque than that of his immediate successors, it is equally full of miscellaneous, and, as it now seems, somewhat inappropriate erudition, and far fuller of the fatal allegorising and personification of abstract qualities which were in every branch of literature the curse of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Yet there are pa.s.sages of real eloquence in Gerson, though perhaps the chief literary point about him is the evidence he gives of the insufficiency of the language in its then condition for serious prose work.
[Sidenote: Moral and Devotional Treatises.]
[Sidenote: Translators.]
[Sidenote: Political and Polemical Works.]
This is indeed the lesson of most of the writing which we have to notice in this chapter. Next to sermons may most naturally be placed devotional and moral works, for, as may easily be imagined, theology and philosophy, properly so called, did not condescend to the vulgar tongue until after the close of the period. Only treatises for the practical use of the unlearned and ignorant adopted the vernacular. Of such there are manuals of devotion and sketches of sacred history which date from the thirteenth century, besides numerous later treatises, among the authors of which Gerson is again conspicuous. The most popular, perhaps, and in a way the most interesting of all such moral and devotional treatises, is the book of the Chevalier de la Tour Landry[142], written in the third quarter of the fourteenth century. This book, destined for the instruction of the author"s three daughters, is composed of Bible stories, moral tales from ordinary literature and from the writer"s experience, precepts and rules of conduct, and so forth; in short, a Whole Duty of Girls. Most however of the works of this sort which were current were, as may be supposed, not original, but translated, and these translations played a very important part in the history of the language. The earliest of all are translations of the Bible, especially of the Psalms and the book of Kings, the former of which may perhaps date from the end of the eleventh century. Translations of the fathers, and of the Lives of the Saints, followed in such numbers that, in 1199, Pope Innocent III. blamed their indiscriminate use. The translation of profane literature hardly begins much before the thirteenth century. In this it becomes frequent; and in the following many cla.s.sical writers and more mediaeval authors in Latin underwent the process. But it was not till the close of the fourteenth century that the most important translations were made, and that translation began to exercise its natural influence on a comparatively unsophisticated language, by providing terms of art, by generally enriching the vocabulary, and by the elaboration of the peculiarities of syntax and style necessary for rendering the sentences of languages so highly organised as Latin and Greek. Under John of Valois and his three successors considerable encouragement was given by the kings of France to this sort of work, and three translators, Pierre Bersuire, Nicholas Oresme, and Raoul de Presles, have left special reputations. The eldest of these, Pierre Bersuire or Bercheure, a friend of Petrarch, was born in 1290, and towards the end of his life, about 1352, translated part of Livy.
Nicholas Oresme, the date of whose birth is unknown, but who entered the College de Navarre in 1348, and is likely to have been at that time thirteen or fourteen years old, and who became Dean of Rouen and Bishop of Lisieux, translated, in 1370 and the following years, the _Ethics_, _Politics_, and _Economics_ of Aristotle (from the Latin, not the Greek). He died in 1382. Oresme was a good writer, and particularly dexterous in adopting neologisms necessary for his purpose. Raoul de Presles executed translations of the Bible and of St. Augustine"s _De Civitate Dei_. All these writers furnished an enlarged vocabulary to their successors, the most remarkable of whom were the already mentioned Christine de Pisan and Alain Chartier. The latter is especially noteworthy as a prose writer, and the comments already made on his style and influence as a poet apply here also. His _Quadriloge Invectif_ and _Curial_, both satirical or, at least, polemical works, are his chief productions in this kind. Raoul de Presles also composed a polemical work, dealing chiefly with the burning question of the papal and royal powers, under the t.i.tle of _Songe du Verger_.
[Sidenote: Codes and Legal Treatises.]
It might seem unlikely at first sight that so highly technical a subject as law should furnish a considerable contingent to early vernacular literature; but there are some works of this kind both of ancient date and of no small importance. England and Normandy furnish an important contingent, the "Laws of William the Conqueror" and the _Coutumiere Normandie_ being the most remarkable: but the most interesting doc.u.ment of this kind is perhaps the famous _a.s.sises de Jerusalem_, arranged by G.o.dfrey of Bouillon and his crusaders as the code of the kingdom of Jerusalem in 1099, and known also as the _Lettres du Sepulcre_, from the place of their custody. The original text was lost or destroyed at the capture of Jerusalem by Saladin in 1187; but a new _a.s.sise_, compiled from the oral tradition of the jurists who had seen and used the old, was written by Philippe de Navarre in 1240, or thereabouts, for the use of the surviving Latin princ.i.p.alities of the East. This was shortly afterwards enlarged and developed by Jean d"Ibelin, a Syrian baron, who took part in the crusade of St. Louis. These codes concerned themselves only with one part of the original _Lettres du Sepulcre_, the laws affecting the privileged cla.s.ses; but the other part, the _a.s.sises des Bourgeois_, survives in _Le Livre de la Cour des Bourgeois_, which has been thought to be older than the loss of the original. These various works contain the most complete account of feudal jurisprudence in its palmy days that is known, for the still earlier Anglo-Norman laws represent a more mixed state of things. It was especially in Cyprus that the Jerusalem codes were observed. The chief remaining works of the same kind which deserve mention are the _etabliss.e.m.e.nts de St. Louis_ and the _Livre de Justice et de Plet_, which both date from the time of Louis himself; the _Conseil_, a treatise on law by Pierre de Fontaines, who died in 1289, and the _Coutumes du Beauvoisis_ of Philippe de Beaumanoir, who wrote in 1283. The legal literature of the fourteenth century is abundant, but possesses considerably less interest.
[Sidenote: Miscellanies and Didactic Works.]
Last of all, before coming to prose fiction, a vast if not very interesting cla.s.s of miscellaneous prose work must be mentioned. The word cla.s.s has been used, but perhaps improperly, for cla.s.sification is almost impossible. Books of accounts and domestic economy of all sorts (generally called _livres de raison_) were very common; treatises of all kinds of more general character on household management abounded. We have a _Menagier de Paris_, a _Viandier de Paris_, both of the fourteenth century. But much earlier the orderly and symmetrical spirit which has always distinguished the French makes itself apparent in literature. The _Livre des Metiers de Paris_ of etienne Boileau, dating from the thirteenth century, gives a complete idea of the organisation of guilds and trades at that time. An innumerable mult.i.tude of treatises on the minor morals, on love, on manners, exists in ma.n.u.script, and in rare instances in print. The _Tresors_, or compendious encyclopaedias, which have already been noticed in verse, began in the thirteenth century to be composed in prose, the most remarkable being that of Brunetto Latini, the master of Dante, who avowedly used French as his vehicle of composition, because it was the most commonly read of European languages. This book was written apparently about or before 1270. Nor did the separate arts lack ill.u.s.tration in prose. Medicine and alchemy, astronomy and poetry, war and chess, had their treatises, while Bestiaries and Lapidaries are almost as numerous in prose as in verse.
Finally, there is the important category of books of travel. There are a certain number of voyages to the Holy Land[143]; some miscellaneous travels mostly, though not universally, translated from the Latin; and last, but not least, the great book of Marco Polo, which seems to have been written originally in French, the author, when in captivity at Genoa, having dictated it to Rusticien of Pisa, who also figures as a compiler of late versions of the Arthurian legend, and who thus had some skill in French composition.
[Sidenote: Fiction]
The prose fiction of the period has been kept to the last, because it expresses a different order of literary endeavour from those divisions which have hitherto been treated. The language of the middle ages was ill-suited for work other than narrative; for narrative work it was supremely well adapted. Yet the prose fiction which we have is not on the whole equal in merit to the poetry, though in one or two instances it is of great value. The medium of communication was not generally known or used until the period of decadence had been reached, and the peculiar defects of mediaeval literature, prolixity and verbiage, show themselves more conspicuously and more annoyingly in prose than in verse. We have, however, some remarkable work of the later periods, and in the latest of all we have one writer, Antoine de la Salle, who deserves to rank with the great chroniclers as a fashioner of French prose.
The French prose fiction of the middle ages resolves itself into several cla.s.ses: the early Arthurian Romances already noticed; the scattered tales of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, which are chiefly to be studied in two excellent volumes of the _Bibliotheque Elzevirienne_[144]; the versions of such collections of legends, chiefly oriental in origin, as the _History of the Seven Wise Men_ and the _Gesta Romanorum_; the longer cla.s.sical romances in prose; the late prose _remaniements_ of the great verse epics and romances of the twelfth century; and the more or less original work of the fifteenth century, when prose was becoming an independent and coequal literary exponent. The first cla.s.s requires no further mention; of the third, the editions of the _Roman des Sept Sages_, by M. Gaston Paris[145], and of the _Violier des Histoires Romaines_, by M. Gustave Brunet[146], may be referred to as sufficient instances; of the fourth a very interesting specimen has been made accessible by the publication of the prose _Roman de Jules Cesar_ of Jean de Tuim[147], a free version from Lucan made apparently in the course of the thirteenth century, and afterwards imitated by the author of the verse romance; the fifth, though very numerous, are not of much value, though the great romance of _Perceforest_ and a few others may be excepted from this general condemnation. The second and the last deserve a longer mention.
The tales of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, as published by MM. Moland and Hericault, are eight in number. Those of the second volume are on the whole inferior in interest to those of the first. They consist of _a.s.seneth_, a graceful legend of the marriage of Joseph with the daughter of the Egyptian high-priest; _Troilus_, interesting chiefly as a prose version of Benoist de Ste. More"s legend of _Troilus and Cressida_, through the channel of Guido Colonna and Boccaccio; and a very curious English story, that of the rebel Fulk Fitzwarine. The thirteenth-century tales consist of _L"Empereur Constant_, the story with which Mr. Morris has made English readers familiar under the t.i.tle of the "Man born to be King;" of a prose version of the ubiquitous legend of _Amis et Amiles_; of _Le roi Flore et la belle Jehanne_, a kind of version of _Griselda_, though the particular trial and exhibition of fidelity is quite different; of the _Comtesse de Ponthieu_, the least interesting of all; and lastly, of the finest prose tale of the French middle ages, _Auca.s.sin et Nicolette_. In this exquisite story Auca.s.sin, the son of the count of Beaucaire, falls in love with Nicolette, a captive damsel. It is very short, and is written in mingled verse and prose. The theme is for the most part nothing but the desperate love of Auca.s.sin, which is careless of religion, which makes him indifferent to the joy of battle and to everything, except "Nicolette ma tres-douce mie," and which is, of course, at last rewarded. But the extreme beauty of the separate scenes makes it a masterpiece.
[Sidenote: Antoine de la Salle.]
Antoine de la Salle is one of the most fortunate of authors. The tendency of modern criticism is generally to endeavour to prove that some famous author has been wrongly credited with some of the work which has made his fame. Homer, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Rabelais, have all had to pay this penalty. In the case of Antoine de la Salle, on the contrary, critics have vied with each other in heaping unacknowledged masterpieces on his head. His only acknowledged work is the charming romance of _Pet.i.t Jean de Saintre_[148]. The first thing added to this has been the admirable satire of the _Quinze Joyes du Mariage_[149], the next the famous collection of the _Cent Nouvelles_[150], and the last the still more famous farce of _Pathelin_[151]. There are for once few or no external reasons why these various attributions should not be admitted, while there are many internal ones why they should. Antoine de la Salle was born in 1398, and spent his life in the employment of different kings and princes;--Louis III of Anjou, King of Naples, his son the good King Rene, the count of Saint Pol, and Philip the Good of Burgundy, who was his natural sovereign. Nothing is known of him after 1461. Of the three prose works which have been attributed to him--there are others of a didactic character in ma.n.u.script--the _Quinze Joyes du Mariage_ is extremely brief, but it contains the quintessence of all the satire on that honourable estate which the middle ages had elaborated.
Every chapter--there is one for each "joy" with a prologue and conclusion--ends with a variation on this phrase descriptive of the unhappy Benedict, "est sy est enclose dans la na.s.se, et a l"aventure ne s"en repent point et s"il n"y estait il se y mettroit bientot; la usera sa vue en languissant, et finira miserablement ses jours." The satire is much quieter and of a more humorous and less boisterous character than was usual at the time. The _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_ are to all intents and purposes prose _fabliaux_. They have the full licence of that cla.s.s of composition, its sparkling fun, its truth to the conditions of ordinary human life. Many of them are taken from the work of the Italian novelists, but all are handled in a thoroughly original manner. In style they are perhaps the best of all the late mediaeval prose works, being clear, precise, and definite without the least appearance of baldness or dryness. _Pet.i.t Jehan de Saintre_ is, together with the _Chronique de Messire Jacques de Lalaing_[152] of Georges Chastellain (a delightful biography, which is not a work of fiction), the hand-book of the last age of chivalry. Jehan de Saintre, who was a real person of the preceding century, but from whom the novelist borrows little or nothing but his name, falls in love with a lady who is known by the fantastic t.i.tle of "la dame des belles cousines." He wins general favour by his courtesy, true love, and prowess; but during his absence in quest of adventures, his faithless mistress betrays him for a rich abbot. The latter part of this book exhibits something of the satiric intention, which was never long absent from the author"s mind; the former contains a picture, artificial perhaps, but singularly graceful, of the elaborate religion, as it may almost be called, of chivalry. Strikingly evident in the book is the surest of all signs of a dying stage of society, the most delicate observation and sympathetic description joined to sarcastic and ironical criticism.
As examples of this prose literature we may take a fragment of one of the sermons attributed to St. Bernard (twelfth century), an extract from _Auca.s.sin et Nicolette_ (thirteenth century), and one from the _Curial_ of Alain Chartier (early fifteenth century):--
ST. BERNARD.
Granz est ceste mers, chier frere, et molt large, c"est ceste presente vie ke molt est amere et molt plaine de granz ondes, ou trois manieres de gent puyent solement trespesseir, ensi k"il delivreit en soient, et chascuns en sa maniere. Troi homme sunt: Noe, Danel et Job. Li primiers de cez trois trespesset a neif, li seconz par pont et li tierz par weit. Cist troi homme signifent trois ordenes ki sunt en sainte eglise. Noe conduist l"arche par mei lo peril del duluve, en cui je reconois aparmenmes la forme de ceos qui sainte eglise ont a governeir. Danel, qui apeleiz est bers de desiers, ki abstinens fut et chastes, il est li ordenes des penanz et des continanz ki entendent solement a deu. Et Job, ki droituriers despensiers fut de la sustance de cest munde, signifet lo feaule peule qui est en maraige, a cuy il loist bien avoir en possesson les choses terrienes. Del primier et del secont nos covient or parler, ear ci sunt or de present nostre frere, et ki abbeit sunt si c.u.m nos, ki sunt del nombre des prelaiz; et si sunt a.s.si ci li moine ki sunt de l"ordene des penanz dont nos mismes, qui abbeit sommes, ne nos doyens mies osteir, si nos par aventure, qui jai nen avignet, nen avons dons obleit nostre professon por la grace de nostre office. Lo tierz ordene, c"est de ceos ki en maraige sunt, trescorrai ju or briement, si c.u.m ceos qui tant nen apartienent mies a nos c.u.m li altre. c"est cil ordenes ki a vveit trespesset ceste grant meir; et cist ordenes est molt peneuous et perillous, et ki vait par molt longe voie, si c.u.m cil ki nule sente ne quierent ne nule adrece. En ceu appert bien ke molt est perillouse lor voie, ke nos tant de gent i veons perir, dont nos dolor avons, et ke nos si poc i veons de ceos ki ensi trespessent c.u.m mestiers seroit; ear molt est gries chose d"eschur l"abysme des vices et les fosses des criminals pechiez entre les ondes de cest seule, nomeyement or en cest tens ke li malices est si enforciez.