bowing with careless grace, sheathed his weapon. "No," quoth he; "I do not love you enough to send you to Heaven by my hand!” William ultimately lost possession of Toulouse, while engaged in war against the Moslems in Spain. Eleven short poems are ascribed to him; but they are valuable from a historical rather than from a literary standpoint. They are all love-songs, but of widely differing character, some being refined and delicate, others gross and indecent. The latter seem to embody allusions to the author's personal adventures; the former exemplify the peculiar tone and style of Provençal poetry in its most flourishing period. The poem inspired by the Crusade in which he took part has been lost. THE TROUBADOUR'S LAY. Anew I tune my lute to love, Ere storms disturb the tranquil hour, Who knows and triumphs in her power. I am, alas! her willing thrall, A captive so accustomed grown? What hope have I, O lady dear? Do I then sigh in vain for thee? Be as a cloistered nun to me? Why banish love and joy thy bowers, If thou couldst learn, like me, to love! AUBADE. THE following aubade, or dawn-song, by an unknown poet, translated by F. Hueffer, is the prototype of A. C. Swinburne's "In the Orchard." Beneath a hawthorn, on a blooming lawn, A lady to her side her friend had drawn, Until the watcher saw the early dawn. Ah God, ah God! The dawn! It comes so soon! "Oh, that the sheltering night would never flee, Ah God, ah God! The dawn! It comes so soon! "Now, sweetest friend, to me with kisses cling, Ah God, ah God! The dawn! It comes so soon! "There let with new delight our love abound— Ah God, ah God! The dawn! It comes so soon! "I drink the air that softly blows my way, And with his fragrant breath my thirst allay. Ah God, ah God! The dawn! It comes so soon!" The lady is of fair and gentle kind, And many a heart her beauty has entwined, But to one friend is aye her heart inclined. Ah God, ah God! The dawn! It comes so soon! BERTRAND DE BORN. THIS noted knight and troubadour was a native of Born, Perigord, in France, about 1140, and died some time before the year 1215. His nature was restless, fickle and intractable; he was a mischief-brewer, and constantly involved in difficulties of his own provoking. But his poems were brilliant, and his death took place in a monastery. Richard, son of Henry II. of England, after having effectively taken the part of Bertrand's brother, whom Bertrand had expelled from his possessions, showed such clemency toward the quarrelsome poet that the latter praised him in a spirited ode. But he aided Prince Henry in rebellion against the king, in punishment for which the monarch besieged and captured Bertrand's castle of Hautefort. In the interview that followed, however, the poet spoke in such loving terms of the dead prince that the king, weeping, commanded that his possessions be restored to him. When Richard ascended the throne, Bertrand tried to stir up war between him and Philip Augustus of France. But the two potentates compromised their differences by agreeing to take part together in a Crusade, on which Bertrand did not accompany them. He had not yet been knighted; and since, in order to attain that honor, it was necessary to select a lady to receive his homage, Richard suggested that he address his songs to his sister, Eleanor Plantagenet. When, later, she married the Duke of Saxony, Bertrand paid his court to Mænz de Montagnac, wife of Talleyrand de Perigord. She, becoming jealous, dismissed him; and when he found his petitions to be restored to favor rejected, he chose another lady-love, Tiberge de Montausier, who, in accordance with the strange formalities prescribed by the laws of gallantry, succeeded in reconciling him with Mænz. He is said to have been so unknightly as afterwards to have sullied her fair fame. At length, after so much mischief-making, the warrior-poet assumed the habit of a Cistercian monk, and died in the odor of sanctity. In his Inferno, Dante represents Bertrand de Born as a headless trunk, bearing his severed head "lantern-wise in his hand." This was in requital of his having tempted King Henry's sons to treason. ELEGY ON YOUNG KING HENRY. HENRY II., King of England, in 1172 appointed his eldest son, Henry, ruler of Anjou, and afterwards his sons Richard and Geoffrey rulers of other parts of his Continental possessions. Young Henry died in 1183, before his father, and his death was bitterly lamented by Bertrand de Born, whose elegy is translated by F. Hueffer. If all the pain, the grief, the bitter tears, All-present death, cruel and full of tears, Now mayst thou boast that of the noblest knight Whose deeds were ever sung to human ears, The world is base and dark and full of tears. Its love has fled; its pleasure passed away; THE COURTS OF LOVE. IN Southern France, seven hundred years ago, court etiquette and the forms of social intercourse among the nobility were regulated by women. War yielded to love and the cultivation of the "gay science." Each Troubadour must elect some lady-generally the wife or daughter of his patron-as the object of his addresses. Gallantry, however, must not transcend certain conventional limits, under pain of banishment or of dire physical penalties, of which the history of the Troubadours furnishes not a few examples. This separation of passionate devotion from the idea of marriage has not been without its effect upon subsequent society and literature. The establishment of Courts of Love seems so fantastic that their very existence has been doubted. They were composed of noble ladies, whose authority was regulated by a Code of Love, disobedience to which was punished by expulsion. This code is given by André le Chapelain in a Latin treatise, written about 1180. Of its thirty-one maxims we quote the following: He who conceals not his feelings from others, cannot love. Wedlock is no excuse against love. Love is ever increasing or diminishing. She who survives her lover is bound to a two years' widowhood. It is shame to love those to marry whom is shame. Love published rarely endures. Easy acceptance repels love, coyness encourages love. True love craves not the embrace of any, save its companion. Every lover is wont to pale in presence of his love. Full of love is full of fear. To a lover, love can deny nothing. He that is overburdened by luxury cannot love. Nothing prevents one woman being loved by two men, or two men by one woman. PIERRE VIDAL. PIERRE VIDAL has been called the Don Quixote of the Troubadours. Born of humble parents at Toulouse, he had a melodious voice and poetic talent. His devotion to the fair sex was inflamed by the delusion that he was a special object of their admiration. Yet his first adventure scarcely warranted this persuasion. Having spoken lightly of a lady, her husband took revenge by splitting the poet's tongue. This wound, however, was cured by the compassion of Hugues, the Lord of Baux, to whose service he attached himself. Barral, Viscount of Marseilles, also accorded him special honor, and the poet made this lord's wife, Adelaide, the theme of his songs under the name of Andierna, or Vierna. The lady showed the poet some favor, until one day when she was sleeping alone, Vidal stole into the room and, kneeling by her bed, kissed her cheek. Adelaide awoke, thinking it was her husband, but finding her mistake, cried out for help, and the presumptuous poet fled. The lady told her husband and asked for vengeance on the poet's insolence. Barral made light of the adventure, but Vidal had to depart. He went to Genoa, and followed Richard I. in his Crusade. Vidal's songs now took a new turn, and were filled with boasts of his prowess. His comrades, playing upon his vanity, induced him to marry a lady of Cyprus, who they pretended was niece of the Eastern Emperor. His romantic imagination became possessed with the notion that he was unjustly excluded from the throne. He assumed the title and dignity of Emperor, caused a throne to be carried before him, and made preparation to assert his rights. Yet he forgot not his former life, and to secure restoration of his honor, he went back to obtain pardon from the Viscountess of Marseilles. His former patrons assisted him, but when Lady Adelaide was requested to signify his pardon by giving him freely the kiss he had before stolen, she refused. The mad poet was next smitten with the charms of a lady named Lopa de Penantier, and to show his devotion, took the name of Loup (Wolf), and offered to submit to the perils of being hunted in a wolf's skin. The proposition was accepted, and shepherds with dogs pursued him to the mountains, and so cruelly was he mangled that he was carried back as dead. The lady and her husband nursed him back to |