seldom to be ranked among their virtues. The prelates are represented, not as ministers of the God of Peace, but rather as doughty champions, seeking to kill as many Saracens as possible. For example, we find in Gaufrey, a French chief, Berart, address the Archbishop of Rheims as follows:

"Turpin, Sir Archbishop, be a knight to-day;

It is a trade in which you are already skilled.
Let you and me try our might against the Pagans!'
And Turpin made answer: So let it be,

I shall read them a very dolorous psalm-book,

One cannot every day be reading texts and versicles; Times come when one should strike with one's trusty steel.'

So then Berart and the Archbishop rushing forward deal fierce blows upon the enemy:

"Of Saracens they made more than one hundred fall, Who will not stand up again either in March or in February." 1

As to the ladies, I may cite also from Gaufrey the description of Flordespine, who is represented as a pattern princess :---

"Her age was but fourteen years and a half:

She knew well how to speak Latin, and she understood

Romane;

She knew well how to play at tables (or draughts) and

chess;

And as to the course of the stars and shining moon,
She knew more than any woman living in this age.'

"2

The princesses were no credit to this excellent 1 Gaufrey, p. 196, ed. 1859.

2 Ibid. p. 55.

training. Not only did they on occasion bear arms and strike blows like the Bradamant of Ariosto, but they too frequently appear both treacherous and cruel. Thus, in Fierabras, one young lady, dreading some evil machinations from her aged governess, lures her close to a palace window, and then makes a sign to her chamberlain behind, who flings the matron out of window into the sea, where she is drowned. The same princess, the beautiful Floripas, is afterwards consulted by her father, the Emir, as to the disposal of some French knights, his prisoners:

"So tell me then, my daughter, what counsel you give me.'

'Sir,' said Floripas, 'hearken to my words:

Have their feet and their limbs cut off,

And burn them in a fire outside the city.'

'Daughter,' said the Emir, you have spoken right well.'"1

These gentes pucelles cannot by any means be accused of carrying to excess their feelings of maiden reserve. When Floripas becomes enamoured of Gui de Bourgogne, she does not scruple to ask his hand in marriage. Gui at first objects, saying, that he will take no wife except from the choice of Charlemagne. But Floripas rejoins :

"I swear by Mahomet, that if you will not take me I will have you all hanged and waving in the wind."

And upon this Gui very naturally yields.2

1 Fierabras, pp. 67, 83.

2 Ibid. p. 85.

In view of this auspicious event, we find that Floripas consents to adopt the Christian faith. We cannot say, however, that her ideas of female propriety are in consequence very much improved. She has to undergo a siege in one of her castles with the knights who were recently her father's prisoners; and although they have no fear that the donjon will be taken, they apprehend a wearisome blockade. Upon this Floripas has an expedient for beguiling the time :

"I have with me five maidens of right noble birth, What can I say more? Let each knight take a paramour, Then so long as we are here, we shall lead a joyous life."

This proposal finds great favour among the five knights.

"Certes,' answered Roland, 'you have spoken courtesy, Never yet saw I a maiden of such noble behaviour.'

The devotion expressed in these Chansons de Geste is indeed of the most grovelling kind, and worthy of the darkest ages. It scarcely soars above the worship of the negro on the coast of Guinea for his fetish, adoring it when he is prosperous, and threatening, or even maltreating it, when he thinks that it does not yield him due protection. I will give two instances from this same poem of Fierabras, the one as applied to a Mahometan, and the other to a Christian prince. First, then, of the Emir with whom we have already made acquaintance as the father of Floripas. Being worsted in battle, he exclaims:

1 Fierabras, p. 118. Nearly the same words are ascribed to Floripas in an earlier passage, p. 69.

66

Ah, Mahomet! Sir, how you have forgotten me!
Ill love have you shown me this day.

If ever I return in safety to Spain,

You shall be so beaten in the ribs and sides

That there is no man in the world but will pity you; And I shall hold you more vile than any dead dog."

Let us come next to the mighty Emperor Charlehimself:

magne

"St. Mary, our Lady,' said Charles of the haughty aspect, 'Protect Oliver, so that he may not be killed or taken; For, by my father's sword, if he were slain,

In no monastery of France, nor yet of other lands,
Should priest or clerk be any more ordained:

I would cast down both crucifix and altar.'

Charlemagne himself appears wholly transfigured in these Chansons de Geste. First he is represented as in extreme old age. Thus in the opening passage of Huon de Bordeaux, he is made to say that he was a hundred years old at the birth of his eldest son Charlot, who is already grown up to manhood. Thus, again, in Doon de Mayence, we are told that Doon and Charlemagne were born on the same day, and yet Charlemagne survived to be also the contemporary of a grandson of Doon, no other than the traitor Ganelon.

In conformity with the idea of decrepid age, the Chansons de Geste no longer hold forth Charlemagne as the wise and mighty Sovereign, such as he is shown both in the earlier fictions, and in authentic history. On the contrary, he is represented as feeble and fretful,

1 See these two passages in the Fierabras, pp. 175, 28.
2 Doon de Mayence, p. 162.

timorous and wavering, and bearded even to his face by his bolder Paladins. There is, among several others, one curious dialogue of this kind in Gui de Bourgogne, the scene being laid in Spain. The great Emperor is so nettled by a taunt from Roland, that he nearly, says the poet, struck him with his glove across the nose:—

66 6

Sir,' so spoke Oliver, 'you are much to blame, And I swear that I will not let seven days pass by Before I begin my march homewards to France.'

'By my head,' quoth Roland, 'I will do the same. Let us leave this old man, who is wholly besotted, And may a hundred thousand devils possess him!'"1

The constant and as it were systematic depreciation of Charlemagne in these later poems might well surprise us. Perhaps it is best explained by remembering how, since the time of Charlemagne, the great feudatories of the Crown had succeeded in depressing both his own descendants and the first Kings of the succeeding dynasty. A feeble monarch, surrounded by powerful and overbearing vassals, might seem, at least to the dependants of the latter, the most eligible form of government. Hence it would be natural for them to suppose that in the time of the far-famed Emperor also a like system had prevailed. The poet makes Roland address to Charles the Great the same terms as the Comte de Vermandois may really have addressed to Charles the Simple.

Besides the Chansons de Geste there exists a wholly

1 Gui de Bourgogne, p. 33.