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From Trails of the Troubadours, by Ramon de Loi [pseud. Raymond de Loy Jameson], Illustrated by Giovanni Petrina, New York: The Century Co., 1926; pp. 77-100.




TRAILS OF THE TROUBADOURS

by Raimon de Loi




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Chapter IV

The Trail of a Hopeful Poet

LONDON TO ALENÇON

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Chapter IV


1


THERE is the best evidence in the world for concluding that in the fall of 1158 Bernard de Ventadour, the troubadour, decided that he would not under any circumstances consent to spend another winter in England. Northern winters, he might have argued, are bad enough; but another winter in England in the service of queen who has already seen her best days (in the twelfth century a woman of thirty-six was an old woman), and is now devoting her time and energy to the breeding of a group of young princes who are destined to be the death of their father, is an intolerable prospect. Since all Englishmen who can afford it go to the south of France as early in the fall as they can afford to and stay as long as they can, and since English gentlemen prove their love for England by spending most of their time elsewhere, Bernard, who was an adaptable creature, decided to follow their example.

England in those days was a wealthy and barbaric kingdom. It was an outpost of civilization, still only partly civilized. In those days poets were not made welcome in [80] England except at the court — England has now corrected that condition — and here, where there were not enough ladies to go around, poets were likely to be pushed aside by eager and warlike noblemen. Most of the natives were unable to understand French, and when they did understand it — the kind of delicate, complimentary, flattering French Bernard used — they were likely to misunderstand it. The knights thought a compliment was an indecent advance, and the ladies expected inhuman prowess of a troubadour in the service of the queen. It is in the English character to believe that women are pure and in the French temperament to hope that they will be discreet.

The knights spent their time quarreling and grumbling. If they were not quarreling with the king or setting up a new king in the hope that the old one would be killed, they were quarreling with the church. When they could find no pretext for a quarrel with the church, the king, or their wives, they would, out of sheer good nature, set to quarreling with each other. Instead of helping a king who, in his own right and his wife’s, controlled the largest empire in the world — all of England and western France from Scotland to pain — instead of realizing that England was a little piece of nothing at all tucked away in a corner, good enough to provide revenue but barbaric and uncivilized, they earnestly tried to make all the trouble they could for the foreigners, and their earnestness was not without its reward.

Centuries before, England had had a civilization. In the time of Alfred poets and scholars and statesmen had flocked to the court at Winchester, had transcribed laws [81] and written histories, and in the green fields had wondered whether life was worth living and why, and engaged in those exercises which made man nobler, more civilized, and less happy than his brethren in the fields, the ox and the ass. But a decadence had set in, or rather, the English had fallen behind the French. They were unaware of the perfection to which the fine art of living had been brought by the southern Gauls. A hot bath to them was a silly luxury. Private lavatories and individual bedrooms were vanities. Pleasant conversation, delicate compliment and intrigue, were effeminate, which is to say immoral. Theirs was a manly race, but crude; they were good fighters, but lacking in finesse and polish, in civilization.

The English did not take kindly to civilization. Their consciousness of the superior physical comfort of life among the Gauls was dimmed by the realization that English money paid for foreign comforts, that these comforts were not necessary to keep an honest Englishman alive, and that if the Gauls thought France was better than England they could go back to where they came from. But most important of all, and the fact that irritated them the most, was that the foreigners were collecting and spending the graft that free-born Englishmen might justly claim by the right of precedence. England was not the place that an Aquitanian poet would visit unless he had business there, and to Bernard’s credit let it be said that I have no evidence to prove that he ever wanted to go to England, or even would have gone had not circumstances and Queen Eleanor, who was a circumstance of another order and used to having her own way, forced him to.


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Despite the eternal discomforts of life in England under an English climate, life with Queen Eleanor in her palace at Bermondsey, which was a country village on the south bank of the Thames, may have been pleasant enough. The palace, originally built in the Saxon style, had probably been rearranged for the Aquitanian princess. Across the river, on rising ground, encircled by a wall over which peered the spires of some hundred churches, was the city of London. On the east was the Tower, newly built; on the west was the spire of the old St. Paul’s and the center of the life of the city. Beyond that was the old Temple, the pleasant country road of the Strand, the villas of the wealthy merchants and gentry, and further still, even as now, the village of Westminster. As the streets were narrow and crowded, and the pleasant country road was not particularly well built, the best way to get from Westminster or Bermondsey or from any part of the city to any other part was by boat; and to conduct almost any business in London one had to pass by or through old St. Paul’s, which was almost crushed by the press of houses, shops, and booths that were huddled about it. London was famous for its “crowds of pimps and bands of gamesters. Its bullies are more numerous than those of France, and it is full of actors, buffoons, eunuchs, flatterers, pages, effeminates, dancing girls, favorites, apothecaries, witches, vultures, owls, magicians, mimes and mendicants.” Evidently England was on the highroad to civilization, although the account, written by a man not friendly to the French, who [83] seems to have had a slight attack of dyspeptic misanthropy, may be somewhat exaggerated. With the accession of Eleanor, brisk trade was made possible with Bordeaux, and claret dropped to the comfortable price of fourpence a gallon.

Here for a few months Eleanor seems to have been comparatively tranquil. While her husband was rushing from London to Normandy, to Wales, to Beaucaire, to Poitiers; besieging castles, negotiating treaties, chopping off the heads of those who betrayed him and buying the friendship of those who were to betray others; conferring with Eleanor’s mother-in-law, the formidable Matilda, sometime empress of Germany; arguing with bishops and clerks, dictating constitutions, setting precedents, building castles, keeping a wary eye out for federal interference, which in those days meant interference from Rome, holding his large possessions together as best he might, reducing his expenses when he could, increasing his revenues when chance offered, busy as any president of the United States and much more active, Eleanor, his wife, spent her time during these years in London, Westminster, Oxford, Winchester, and Normandy, raising the children who were to be the death of their father, who were to avenge her for having married at her own choice the only man in Europe strong enough to break her, and entertaining herself with Bernard de Ventadour, Bernard the Handsome, Bernard the Hopeful, the son of the lowest servant in an obscure château and one of the best poets in Europe. She was cultivating the arts and the artists, and for the first time in her life was keeping herself free from scandal. Henry, Rosamond Clifford, young [84] Thomas Becket who was to die a saint, and others were providing that; and she seems to have felt that so long as one member of the family was scandalous, she might devote her energies to the production of proud, noisy, meddlesome children.

However well London agreed with Eleanor, Bernard de Ventadour seems to have found it difficult. About 1158 he admitted that for two years he had made no new songs, and this admission is significant, for Bernard was the kind of person who wrote poetry on any provocation. He says in one song: “When the blossoms appear beneath the green leaf, when the air is clear and the sky serene; when the sweet birds sing in the woods in their fashion, I too can sing; I have more joy in my heart than they: all of my days are joy and song, I think of no other thing.”

Many explanations have been advanced to account for Bernard’s silence The school of literary critics called meteorological, because they are not meteoric but believe that the level of art rises and falls with the barometer, gloat about Bernard’s admission that he needed serene skies and clear air for the production of poetry. (Last year summer in England was on a Monday morning and the year before that on a Wednesday afternoon.) Critics point out that although there may be occasional perfect days in England — these usually occur when one is safe in the sunshine of southern France and thus dares to long “to be in England now that April’s there” — the enthusiasm with which poets describe these days prove both their rarity and the need of recording them for the information of posterity. A boastful contemporary of Bernard’s uses the generous phrase [85] “on pleasant days” and says that these were sometimes the occasions of celebrations. Then “the streets are cleaned and decorated by hangings and garlands; they are thronged by rich burgesses in holiday attire and there are entertainments of gleemen and jugglers.” Another group of literary “scientists,” the gastronomes, who say, “Show me what you write and I will tell you what you eat” —a bit of information which would seem to be somewhat supererogatory — insist that English cooking is and always was ruinous to the digestion and point out that there are only three kinds of vegetables in England and that two of these are cabbage. This, they say accounts for the traditionally phlegmatic temperament of the Englishman and for the silence of Bernard.

In the winter of 1158 Bernard begins to hint that he is unhappy. Some critics suggest that he was recalled by Agnes de Montluçon, vicomtesse de Ventadour and his first love. They do not think it improbable, and perhaps they are right, that he was faithful in his fashion to both the vicomtesse and the queen and that he loved them both faithfully and both at the same time. I do not suggest that the queen granted him the liberties that Agnes seems to have granted. In one place he mentions the “evil speakers,” but whether these people spoke evil about him and the queen or about him and somebody else is not clear. Critics believe that the following lines were addressed to the queen:

My heart is so full of joy that everything seems to have changed its nature. It seems to me that the cold winter is full of flowers: white, vermilion, and yellow. My happiness grows with the bitter wind and the cold rain. I raise my voice. I build my song. My [86] prowess increases. I bear in my heart so much of joy and of sweetness that the winter seems to be filled with flowers and the snow is a green tapestry.

I could go unclothed into the coldness for my perfect love would protect me against the bitter winds. . . .

But alas! I have placed my hope on her who succors me so little that I am lifted and dropped like a boat on the waves. . . .

I do not know whither to flee to evade the evils which crush me. Love has brought me more sorrow than it brought the lover Tristan in his love for Isolt the blond. . . .

Eleanor spent Christmas day with her husband and family and full court at Cherbourg, and here, it may be, Bernard had his minstrels sing to her his farewell song. As it was as disastrous in the twelfth century as it is now for an ambitious young man to spend four years away from his friends in a barbarous country, and as Bernard may have feared that his acquaintances in the south may have forgotten him entirely, he introduced in this song a peculiar request, a request for a letter of recommendation from the queen. He said:

I am awakened by the sweet song which the nightingale makes at night whilst I am slumbering. I am lost in joy; my soul is filled with amorous dreams; for I have dedicated my life to the love of joy, and joyously my song begin.

If people knew the joy which is mine and if I could make them understand, all other joy in the world would be small in comparison with it. Some vaunt their joy and think they are rich and superior in perfect love. Their love is equal to only half of mine. . . .

Frequently I contemplate in thought the gracious and well made body of my lady. She is distinguished by her courtesy. She knows well the art of gentle speech. It would require an entire year for [87] me to tell you all the good qualities of my lady. She has so much courtesy and distinction!

Lady, I am your knight, and I shall be your knight forever, always ready for your service. You are my first love, and you will be my last . . . as long as life endures.

Those who think I will be separated from her do not know how easily souls can find each other however distant the bodies may be.

Know, ye speakers of evil, that the best messenger to her that I have is a thought which reminds me of her beauty.

I leave you and I am melancholy. I do not know when I shall see you again. It is for you that I have left the king. Grant me this grace: let me not suffer because of our separation, when I present myself at a strange court, courteously among knights and ladies . . .

One may explain in many ways the departure from the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine of Bernard the troubadour poet of Ventadour. Perhaps he was driven away by evil speakers. Perhaps he had begun to bore her, or perhaps he had found her tiresome. Perhaps he found the young princes a nuisance, or perhaps the climate of England was too much for him; or perhaps, as his more sentimental biographers suggest, he actually had received a message from Agnes de Montluçon, his first passion, and had set out for the south, in that naïve hopefulness which is the privilege of poets, to find her again or to recreate her image out of those imperfect details which our senses bring to us and from which we build the personality of the ideal. For Bernard de Ventadour loved many women in his time. One he had loved — and he had loved her well and calamitously — before he met the English queen at whose court he remained songless for two years. Others he was to love, great [88] ladies and experienced in the arts of courtoisie and belle parler; but who can say that each was not in some way a reflection of that image to which he was eternally as faithful as it is fitting that any man should be whose flesh hungers and thirsts for nourishment and whose spirit hungers and thirsts for beauty?




3



There is a quality of prettiness, a sensuous richness as of butter and eggs, a fecundity, fertility, and smugness in the undulations of the wooded plain which Normandy throws out, wave upon wave, toward the British Channel and the south coast of England. The old Normandy casts an oblique eye upon her ungrateful daughter England, whose white chalk cliffs flash back in a triumphant smile. A tall, brown-haired, blue-eyed Norman peasant said to me as he drew a glass of sparkling cider one summer day: “Eh bien! The English! We’re the same blood as they and the same race.” And a teacher in one of the schools at Argenton asked: “And your English architecture, whence does it come? Isn’t it after all merely an exaggeration of the Norman style? Was there an architecture before the Normans came to England? Was there even an English nation?”

Many of the towns and most of the country of northern Normandy through which Bernard passed are English towns and English country; the people are, in many respects, English people. The Normans gave to the mild Anglo-Saxons, from whom they stole England, a shrewdness, an intellectual agility, and the gift for playing a game [89] which at its best is called diplomacy and at its worst trickery. English vices and English virtues are also Norman vices and Norman virtues. In Normandy one finds the same boisterous satire of human vices and human follies which is to be found in much of the most characteristic English literature; in the first Butler, Fielding, and Chaucer. In the churches of Normandy in the spring were once celebrated curious pagan festivals. In the festival of the drunken deacons, the deacons elected a “bishop of fools”; they burned before him incense of smoldering leather; they chanted obscene songs and ate on the altar. At Evreux the first of May was the festival of St. Vital and the festival of cuckolds. The priests wore their surplices inside out and threw starch into each other’s eyes. At Beauvais a girl and a child rode an ass into the church, and the choir chanted as refrain the edifying word “Hee-haw.” The people of this country and time were a vital race, whose passions, long suppressed, demanded violent and boisterous expression.

If Bernard de Ventadour went by land rather than by sea, his first stop must have been Valognes, whose beauty dates from the seventeenth rather than the twelfth century. But even in towns like Valognes one may see here and there, if one wanders through the small streets or studies the town plan with an attentive eye, a pile of stones or a bit of wall or — as at Montebourg some eight miles further — an old abbey founded and built by the Norman or Angevin kings, Bernard’s patrons. Beyond this the country flattens out and becomes a country of lowing cattle, butter and eggs, and very placid streams over which gnarled trees lean like [90] women brushing their bosoms in the water. And all of these towns through which Bernard must have passed, either on this trip or on those other trips when he rode with Eleanor or Henry on their royal business, are towns over which the great ones of those days growled and fought and killed each other. Before them many an honest man-at-arms lost his life; and in the sacking of them, many a thrifty burgess lost his wife and wealth and daughters in order that the prestige of the English kings might be raised and the wealth of the English coffers might increase. Carentan, the next town on the great main road toward the south, was taken by Geoffrey Plantagenet after a siege and was sacked; here he built the château in which he never lived; and beyond Carentan, on a rock hill rising from the right bank of the river Vire, is St.-Lô, which suffered a disastrous siege in 1142. Beyond that is Tessy, and still further, embraced on three sides by the meandering river, is the ancient city of Vire. On a hill is the donjon built by the first Henry, the grandfather of Eleanor’s husband, that it might dominate the four valleys of which this is the center. The donjon and the fortified gates still stand, and the citizens of Vire are busy in the manufacture of fresh white sheets.

To the southwest of Vire is the city of Tinchebrai, where there was once a famous battle of which you will here more in a moment; and directly to the south a city which in the twelfth century was much more important, the city of Mortain, held, when Bernard passed through, by William III, the last descendant of the malodorous Stephen from whom Henry II had taken the crown of England. From [91] the earliest times, the county of Mortain was one of the most important in this part of Normandy. It was always assigned to one of the brothers of the Norman duke, much as Wales to-day is assigned to the English crown prince. When William the Conqueror took England, he granted the earldom of Cornwall to Robert, count of Mortain. Later this same Robert rebelled against William’s successor, William Rufus; and Robert’s son, William of Mortain, led the rebellion of the barons against his cousin, Henry I, Eleanor of Aquitaine’s grandfather-in-law.

The politicians of that age had not yet formulated the comfortable policy of majority rule, and the minority had not yet learned to chew the cud of its discomforts placidly until somebody died. If a minority of those days wanted a thing badly enough, it would fight for it and die for it if need be, and sometimes, because the majority of these majorities is usually made up of people who want to be on the winning side, it would get what it wanted. In this famous rebellion the barons lost, not, however, because their arms were weaker, but because their purpose was less obdurate.

The first two Henries, kings of England, were shrewd men. They were the first to discover the advantages of diplomacy over war and the first to make the king of England something more than the first baron of the land. Before their time the barons had lived together in a more or less argumentative complacence. They held what they could hold and stole what they could get. The king was no more than the chief baron among them, and his actions were rigidly limited by the good nature of the lords who [92] were willing, from a desire for gain or from vanity, to put themselves out to help him or hurt him. Henry I and Henry II were shrewder than their followers, and before they died they had succeeded by bribery and murder, which are dignified in history texts by the emasculate words “persuasion” and “punishment,” in giving the king of England a position which approximated that of a ruler. The barons were not particularly happy.

In the beginning of the twelfth century Henry I was waving a precarious scepter over England, and his brother Robert, ostensibly independent of Henry’s sovereignty, was duke of Normandy. In Robert’s castles and the castles of his friends were a host of malcontents who were progressives and firm believers in the doctrine of change. Chief among these were Robert himself and William, count of Mortain, Henry’s cousin. Normandy was a sore whose suppurations infected the happiness of England, but most particularly of England’s king. It wanted cleaning. The adventures of the campaign were many, but the dramatic moment came before Tinchebrai, one of the castles held by Mortain. Henry took it from its small band of defenders and left in it his own garrison. Mortain returned, recaptured the castle, and locked the garrison up. Then Henry reappeared and laid siege. Mortain called all his friends, and when the two armies were assembled, the leaders, the duke of Normandy and the king of England, began to discuss terms. As they could not agree on terms, they decided that the quickest way of settling their differences was to fight them out. Their armies fought for an hour. During the battle the count of Bellême, evidently persuaded by [93] one of Henry’s agents, fled. The army of Mortain and Normandy surrendered. Henry captured four hundred knights and ten thousand burgesses, and “no man concerned himself to count the number of their fellows who fell in the fight.” Henry lost few men of rank and virtually no knights, and Normandy lost not more than a score of knights in the battle. The count of Mortain was sentenced to life imprisonment and had both of his eyes put out. Mortain now is a city of two thousand, and on the left bank of the river are the vestiges of the old château.

Although the progressive and energetic spirit of the Normans has somewhat obscured the work of the twelfth century — the Normans frequently prefer, and that not without reason, the comforts of a modern house to the discomforts of a medieval castle — the town of Domfront, a few hours beyond Mortain and in Bernard’s time the second or third most important city of that district, still presents to the universe a face which is vaguely medieval. It is on a hill some two hundred feet above the valley; it has a wall and vine-clad towers, and a ruined château. Because it is in the border-land between Anjou and Normandy, it has witnessed many sieges and many battles. When William Rufus, king of England, was having trouble with this same Robert of Normandy, young Henry, who later became Henry I, promised Rufus to attack the city of Eu some miles beyond Dieppe. He left Domfront, where he had taken refuge to repair his fortunes, and rode out gaily to the city of Avranches, where he took shop. Instead of attacking Eu, however, he appeared suddenly in England, and here, professing friendship to Rufus, he succeeded in [94] squeezing from that unhappy monarch supplies of men and money sufficient to launch his own blow at the English throne. Matilda, Henry II’s mother, also seems to have thought Domfront a good place in which to be ambitions, for she and her husband Geoffrey arrived here after Henry I, her father, died; but Stephen was too quick or Geoffrey was too slow, and his army from Anjou began quarreling with the Normans and after a great fight in the streets east of Domfront was driven out, and with it its ambitious master.

The Domfrontains are very friendly and very cordial. They make you feel that you are doing them a favor by being there and that you must always be their friend. They persuaded Henry I and Henry II and several other Englishmen by adoption always to be their friends and never to desert them and always to protect them against their wicked enemies. And the English kings seem to have remembered their promises to the Domfrontains. They deserted Domfront when they found it profitable, and protected Domfront when they felt like it, and treated the town after the manner of the aristocracy, which is with negligence.

Half of the twenty-four towers that once studded the city wall silhouette themselves nightly against the western sky and defy the insidious attack of the small roots which slip between the stones, and the cold frost of winter, and the heat of summer, as they once defied hostile armies or welcomed ambitious princes. One night as I watched the sun set there, a stone broke loose and thundered down into the valley. The stones that were left settled themselves [95] comfortably murmuring to await their turn. When they are all gone and the ugly new church whose yellow skeleton screams against the eastern sky has become old — for God, whose wisdom passes the comprehension of men, is as tolerant of ugliness as of beauty — the Domfrontains will still gossip in the Place de la Mairie. They will tell you that the new church has already cost them more than a million and a half francs, which were raised by the sale of butter and eggs. The hostess of the tavern thinks that a million and a half francs is a great deal of money and that the old church did very well. And so do I.

Bernard then proceeded southeast, through rolling fields and over gentle steams to Domfront’s sister city, Alençon. When Domfront had a new château, Alençon had a new château. When Domfront fell before an army, Alençon also fell. Here William of Normandy, while he was still William the Bastard and before he had attained to the eminence of the Conqueror, once avenged bitterly a bitter insult. William’s father was Robert the Devil, and his mother was pretty Arlette, the daughter of a furrier, who bore to Robert and others many a count who succeeded in disturbing the serenity of the Norman landscape. William was besieging Alençon. When the defenders realized that they could hold out no longer they collected on the walls and shouted, “A la pel! A la pel!” intending to humiliate him by reference to his grandfather’s occupation. About fifty years ago before Bernard reached Alençon, Henry I built the donjon which still stands. Later he gave the city to the father of the same Thibaut of Blois who entertained Eleanor on her flight from Paris to [96] Poitiers. Once Alençon was held by one William Talvas. Robert the Devil, who was Duke of Normandy at that time, took it away from him for some offense. William Talvas, in order to regain it, had to approach Robert the Devil on his knees and barefooted. He was clad only in a chemise, and he bore a saddle on his back. This kind of humiliating punishment was not so childish in the Middle Ages as it is now. In those days, a man’s power depended largely on his ability to hold the respect of his followers; that is, on what passed in the Middle Ages for personal dignity. You could not have a great deal of respect for a man whom you had seen groveling on the ground. Later, William Talvas had his revenge; but that is another story.

Some hundred years after Bernard visited it, Alençon was the setting for one of those domestic triangles which created a certain amount of gossip and finally terminated in the polite sport of the time, the wager of battle. Attached to the household of the earl of Alençon were a knight called John of Carougne and a squire called Jaques de Grys. Sir John went oversea for advancement of his honor, and left his lady in the castle. On his return she told him that shortly after his departure his friend Jaques de Grys paid a visit to her, made excuse to be alone with her, and then, by force, dishonored her. The knight called his and her friends together and asked their counsel as to what he should do. He took his complaint to the earl of Alençon. The squire proved that on four o’clock of the morning on which the offense was supposed to have been committed he was at his lord’s the earl’s [97] house, and the earl stated that at the same morning he was present at the levee. The alibi seemed perfect.

Whereupon the Earl said that she did but dream it wherefore he would maintain his squire and commanded the lady to speak no more of the matter. But the knight, who was of great courage and well trusted and believed his wife, would not agree to that opinion, but he went to Paris and showed the matter there to the parliament.

The contest continued for more than a year and a half. Finally

the parliament determined that there should be a battle at utterance between them. . . .

Then the lists were made at a place called St. Katherine behind the Temple. There was so much people that it was a marvel to behold; and on the one side of the lists there was made great scaffolds, that the lords might the better see the battle of the two champions; so they both came to the field, armed in all places, and there each of them was set in their chair.

The Earl of St. Paul governed John of Carougne and the Earl of Alençon’s company was with Jaques de Grys. And when the knight entered the field he came first to his wife who was sitting in a chair covered in black, and he said to her thus: — Dame, by your information and your quarrel do I put my life in adventure as to fight with Jaques de Grys; ye know if the cause be just and true. Sir, said the lady, it is as I have said; wherefore ye may fight surely, the cause is good and true. With those words the knight kissed the lady and then took her by the hand and blessed her, and so entered into the field. The lady sat still in the black chair in her prayers to God and the Virgin Mary, humbly praying them, by their special grace, to send her husband the victory according [98] to the right he was in. The lady was in great heaviness for she was not sure of her life; for if her husband should have been discomfited she was judged without remedy to be brent and her husband hanged. I cannot say whether she repented or not, yet the matter was so forward that both she and her husband were in great peril; howbeit finally she must as then abide the adventure. And so these two champions were set one against the other, and so mounted on their horses and behaved them nobly, for they knew what pertained to deeds of arms. There were many knights and lords of France that were come thither to see that battle: the two champions parted at their first meeting but neither of them did hurt the other; and upon the jousts they alighted on foot to perform the battle, and so fought valiantly; and first John of Carougne was hurt in the thigh wherebye all his friends were in great fear; but after that he fought so valiantly he beat down his adversary to the earth, and thrust his sword in his body and so slew him on the field, and then he demanded if he had done his devoir or not; and they answered that he had valiantly achieved his battle. Then Jaques de Grys was delivered to the hangman of Paris and he drew him to the gibbet of Montfaucon and there hanged him up. Then John of Carogne came before the king and kneeled down and the king made him to stand up before him and the same day the king caused to be delivered to him a thousand francs, and retained him to be one of his chamber with a pension of two hundred pounds by the year, during the term of his life; then he thanked the king and the lords and went to his wife and kissed her and then they went together to the church of Our Lady of Paris, and made their offering and then returned to their lodgings.

When John of Carougne plunged his sword into the body of Jaques de Grys he was defending his property and not propriety, which is a much later conception; he was thinking of a real thing, to save his life and kill his enemy, and not of an abstract thing, such as saving his own face [99] and ruining his enemy’s reputation. The Middle Ages knew that there were some women who seduced men because they were made that way, and since John of Carougne would make no compromise, the parliament let him fight it out as best he might. Nor was John of Carougne needlessly cruel or bloodthirsty. It is much less cruel, in a way, to kill a man under the blue sky and in public than it is to shut him up in a room with poisonous gases or torture him in the electric chair.

From Alençon Bernard went south to Le Mans over the last trail that his young master Henry II ever followed, and thence onward over the trail of Henry’s greedy and poetic son Richard, via Saumur and Poitiers and thence further and further into the south and into the spring over trails worn deep by the feet of many poets, until one morning he found himself on a naked white road. Above him was a sky of cobalt blue. At his left was a yellow cottage; and before him, rising tier upon tier above the city walls, were the spires of Toulouse. Of the friends he met there and the things they did, you shall hear later if you care to read.


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Gold embossed guitar from spine of this book.









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