Knights and their days

by Dr. Doran

KNIGHTS AT HOME.

“Entrez Messìeurs; jouissez-vous de mon coin-de-feu. Me voilà, chez moi!”— Arlequin à St. Germains.

Ritter Eric, of Lansfeldt, remarked, that next to a battle he dearly loved a banquet. We will, therefore, commence the “Knight at Home,” by showing him at table. Therewith, we may observe, that the Knights of the Round Table appear generally to have had very solid fare before them. King Arthur—who is the reputed founder of this society, and who invented the table in order that when all his knights were seated none could claim precedency over the others—is traditionally declared to have been the first man who ever sat down to a whole roasted ox. Mr. Bickerstaff, in the “Tatler,” says that “this was certainly the best way to preserve the gravy;” and it is further added, that “he and his knights set about the ox at his round table, and usually consumed it to the very bones before they would enter upon any debate of moment.”

They had better fare than the knights-errant, who

“as some think,

Of old, did neither eat nor drink,

Because when thorough deserts vast,

And regions desolate they passed,

Where belly-timber above ground,

Or under, was not to be found,

Unless they grazed, there’s not one word

Of their provision on record:

Which made some confidently write,

They had no stomachs but to fight.”

This, however, is only one poet’s view of the dietary of the errant gentlemen of old. Pope is much nearer truth when he says, that—

“In days of old our fathers went to war,

Expecting sturdy blows and scanty fare,

Their beef they often in their morion stewed,

And in their basket-hilt their beverage brewed.”

—that basket-hilt of which it is so well said in Hudibras, that—

“it would hold broth,

And serve for fight and dinner both.”

The lords and chivalric gentlemen who fared so well and fought so stoutly, were not always of the gentlest humor at home. It has been observed that Piedmontese society long bore traces of the chivalric age. An exemplification is afforded us in Gallenga’s History of Piedmont. It will serve to show how absolute a master a powerful knight and noble was in his own house. Thus, from Gallenga we learn that Antonio Grimaldi, a nobleman of Chieri, had become convinced of the faithlessness of his wife. He compelled her to hang up with her own hand her paramour to the ceiling of her chamber; then he had the chamber walled up, doors and windows, and only allowed the wretched woman as much air and light, and administered with his own hand as much food and drink, as would indefinitely prolong her agony. And so he watched her, and tended her with all that solicitude which hatred can suggest as well as love, and left her to grope alone in that blind solitude, with the mute testimony of her guilt—a ghastly object on which her aching eyes were riveted, day by day, night after night, till it had passed through every loathsome stage of decomposition. This man was surely worse in his vengeance than that Sir Giles de Laval, who has come down to us under the name of Blue-Beard.

This celebrated personage, famous by his pseudonym, was not less so in his own proper person. There was not a braver knight in France, during the reigns of Charles VI. and VII., than this Marquis de Laval, Marshal of France. The English feared him almost as much as they did the Pucelle. The household of this brave gentleman was, however, a hell upon earth; and licentiousness, blasphemy, attempts at sorcery, and, more than attempts at, very successful realizations of, murder were the little foibles of this man of many wives. He excelled the most extravagant monarchs in his boundless profusion, and in the barbaric splendor of his court or house: the latter was thronged with ladies of very light manners, players, mountebanks, pretended magicians, and as many cooks as Julian found in the palace of his predecessor at Constantinople. There were two hundred saddle-horses in his stable, and he had a greater variety of dogs than could now be found at any score of “fanciers” of that article. He employed the magicians for a double purpose. They undertook to discover treasures for his use, and pretty handmaids to tend on his illustrious person, or otherwise amuse him by the display of their accomplishments. Common report said that these young persons were slain after a while, their blood being of much profit in making incantations, the object of which was the discovery of gold. Much exaggeration magnified his misdeeds, which were atrocious enough in their plain, unvarnished infamy. At length justice overtook this monster. She did not lay hold of him for his crimes against society, but for a peccadillo which offended the Duke of Brittany. Giles de Laval, for this offence, was burnt at Nantes, after being strangled—such mercy having been vouchsafed to him, because he was a gallant knight and gentleman, and of course was not to be burnt alive like any petty villain of peasant degree. He had a moment of weakness at last, and just previous to the rope being tightened round his neck, he publicly declared that he should never have come to that pass, nor have committed so many excesses, had it not been for his wretched education. Thus are men, shrewd enough to drive bargains, and able to discern between virtue and vice, ever ready, when retribution falls on them at the scaffold, to accuse their father, mother, schoolmaster, or spiritual pastor. Few are like the knight of the road, who, previous to the cart sliding from under him, at Tyburn, remarked that he had the satisfaction, at least, of knowing that the position he had attained in society was owing entirely to himself. “May I be hanged,” said he, “if that isn’t the fact.” The finisher of the law did not stop to argue the question with him, but, on cutting him down, remarked, with the gravity of a cardinal before breakfast, that the gentleman had wronged the devil and the ladies, in attributing his greatness so exclusively to his own exertions.

I have said that perhaps Blue-Beard’s little foibles have been exaggerated; but, on reflection, I am not sure that this pleasant hypothesis can be sustained. De Laval, of whom more than I have told may be found in Mezeray, was not worse than the Landvogt Hugenbach, who makes so terrible a figure in Barante’s “Dukes of Burgundy.” The Landvogt, we are told by the last-named historian, cared no more for heaven than he did for anybody on earth. He was accustomed to say that being perfectly sure of going to the devil, he would take especial care to deny himself no gratification that he could possibly desire. There was, accordingly, no sort of wild fancy to which he did not surrender himself. He was a fiendish corruptor of virtue, employing money, menaces, or brutal violence, to accomplish his ends. Neither cottage nor convent, citizen’s hearth nor noble’s château, was secure from his invasion and atrocity. He was terribly hated, terribly feared—but then Sir Landvogt Hugenbach gave splendid dinners, and every family round went to them, while they detested the giver.

He was remarkably facetious on these occasions, sometimes ferociously so. For instance, Barante records of him, that at one of his pleasant soirées he sent away the husbands into a room apart, and kept the wives together in his grand saloon. These, he and his myrmidons despoiled entirely of their dresses; after which, having flung a covering over the head of each lady, who dared not, for her life, resist, the amiable host called in the husbands one by one, and bade each select his own wife. If the husband made a mistake, he was immediately seized and flung headlong down the staircase. The Landvogt made no more scruple about it than Lord Ernest Vane when he served the Windsor manager after something of the same fashion. The husbands who guessed rightly were conducted to the sideboard to receive congratulations, and drink various flasks of wine thereupon. But the amount of wine forced upon each unhappy wretch was so immense, that in a short time he was as near death as the mangled husbands, who were lying in a senseless heap at the foot of the staircase.

They who would like to learn further of this respectable individual, are referred to the pages of Barante. They will find there that this knight and servant of the Duke of Burgundy was more like an incarnation of the devil than aught besides. His career was frightful for its stupendous cruelty and crime; but it ended on the scaffold, nevertheless. His behavior there was like that of a saint who felt a little of the human infirmity of irritability at being treated as a very wicked personage by the extremely blind justice of men. So edifying was this chivalrous scoundrel, that the populace fairly took him for the saint he figured to be; and long after his death, crowds flocked to his tomb to pray for his mediation between them and God.

The rough jokes of the Landvogt remind me of a much greater man than he—Gaston de Foix, in whose earlier times there was no lack of rough jokes, too. The portrait of Gaston, with his page helping to buckle on his armor, by Giorgione da Castel Franco, is doubtless known to most of my readers—through the engraving, if not the original. It was formerly the property of the Duke of Orleans; but came, many years ago, into the possession, by purchase, of Lord Carlisle. The expression of the page or young squire who is helping to adjust Gaston’s armor is admirably rendered. That of the hero gives, perhaps, too old a look to a knight who is known to have died young.

This Gaston was a nephew of Louis XII. His titles were Duke of Nemours and Count d’Etampes. He was educated by his mother, the sister of King Louis. She exulted in Gaston as one who was peculiarly her own work. “Considering,” she says, “how honor became her son, she was pleased to let him seek danger where he was likely to find fame.” His career was splendid, but proportionally brief. He purchased imperishable renown, and a glorious death, in Italy. He gained the victory of Ravenna, at the cost of his life; after which event, fortune abandoned the standard of Louis; and Maximilian Sforza recovered the Milanese territories of his father, Ludovic. This was early in the sixteenth century.

But it is of another Gaston de Foix that I have to speak. I have given precedence to one bearer of the name, because he was the worthier man; but the earlier hero will afford us better illustrations of the home-life of the noble knights who were sovereigns within their own districts. Froissart makes honorable mention of him in his “Chronicle.” He was Count de Foix, and kept court at Ortez, in the south of France. There assembled belted knights and aspiring ’squires, majestic matrons and dainty damsels. When the Count was not on a war-path, his house was a scene of great gayety. The jingle of spurs, clash of swords, tramp of iron heels, virelays sung by men-at-arms, love-songs hummed by audacious pages, and romances entoned to the lyre by minstrels who were masters in the art—these, with courtly feasts and stately dances, made of the castle at Ortez anything but a dull residence. Hawking and hunting seem to have been “my very good Erle’s” favorite diversion. He was not so much master of his passions as he was of his retainers; and few people thought the worse of him simply because he murdered his cousin for refusing to betray his trust, and cut the throat of the only legitimate son of the Earl.

We may form some idea of the practical jests of those days, from an anecdote told by Froissart. Gaston de Foix had complained, one cold day, of the scanty fire which his retainers kept up in the great gallery. Whereupon one of the knights descended to the court-yard, where stood several asses laden with wood. One of them he seized, wood and ass together, and staggering up-stairs into the gallery, flung the whole, the ass heels uppermost, on to the fire. “Whereof,” says Froissart, “the Earl of Foix had great joy, and so had all they that were there, and had marvel of his strength, how he alone came up all the stairs with the ass and the wood on his neck.”

Gaston was but a lazy knight. It was high noon, Froissart tells us, before he rose from his bed. He supped at midnight; and when he issued from his chamber to proceed to the hall where supper was laid, twelve torches were carried before him, and these were held at his table “by twelve varlets” during the time that supper lasted. The Earl sat alone, and none of the knights or squires who crowded round the other tables dared to speak a word to him unless the great man previously addressed him. The supper then must have been a dull affair.

The treasurer of the Collegiate Church of Chimay relates in a very delicate manner how Gaston came to murder his little son. Gaston’s wife was living apart from her husband, at the court of her brother, the King of Navarre, and the “little son” in question was residing there on a visit to his mother. As he was on the point of returning, the king of Navarre gave him a powder, which he directed the boy to administer to his father, telling him that it was a love-powder, and would bring back his father’s affection for the mother. The innocent boy took the powder, which was in fact poison; and a night or two after his return to Ortez, an illegitimate son of Gaston found it in the boy’s clothes. The base-born lad informed against his brother, and when Gaston had given the powder to a dog, which immediately died, he could scarcely be kept from poniarding his son upon the spot. The poor child was flung into a dungeon, where, between terror and despair, he refused to take any food. Upon being told of this, the earl entered the chamber in which the boy was confined, “he had at the same time a little knife in his hand, to pare withal his nails.... In great displeasure he thrust his hand at his son’s throat, and the point of his knife a little entered into his throat into a certain vein; and the earl said, ‘Ah, traitor, why dost thou not eat thy meat?’ and therewith the earl departed without any more doing or saying.” Never was brutal murder more daintily glozed over, but Froissart is so afraid that he may not have sufficiently impressed you with a conviction of its being a little accident, that he goes on to say “The child was abashed, and afraid of the coming of his father, and was also feeble of fasting, and the point of the knife a little entered into his throat, into a certain vein of his throat; and so [he] fell down suddenly and died!”

The rascally sire was as jolly after the deed as before it; but he too one day “fell down suddenly and died.” He had overheated himself with hunting, and in that condition bathed in cold water as soon as he reached home. The description of the whole of this domestic scene is one of the most graphic in Froissart, but it is too long for quotation. It must suffice that the vast possessions of the count fell into the hands of that villanous illegitimate son, Sir Jenbayne de Foix. The latter was one of the six knights who, with Charles VI., entered a ball-room disguised as satyrs, and fast chained together. Some one, who is supposed to have owed no good-will to the king, flung a torch into the group. Their inflammable dresses immediately caught fire, and Sir Jenbayne de Foix was one of those who was burned to death. The king himself, as is well known, had a very narrow escape.

Perhaps one of the chief home pleasures enjoyed by knights when not engaged in war, was the pleasure of the chase. Idle country gentlemen now resemble their chivalrous ancestors in this respect, and for want of or distaste for other vocations, spend three fourths of their rural time in the fields. In the old days too, as ever, there were clerical gentlemen very much addicted to hunting and moreover not less so to trespassing. These were not reverend rectors on their own thorough-breds, or curates on borrowed ponies, but dignified prelates—even archbishops. One of the latter, Edmund, archbishop of Canterbury, in the beginning of the thirteenth century, presumed to hunt without permission, on the grounds of a young knight, the Earl of Arundel, a minor. On the day the Earl came of age, he issued a prohibition against the archiepiscopal trespasser, and the latter in return snapped his fingers at the earl, and declared that his way was as legally open to any chase as it was free into any church. Accordingly, the right reverend gentleman issued forth as usual, with hounds and horses, and a “numerous meet” of clerical friends and other followers, glad to hunt in such company. Their sport, however, was spoiled by the retainers of the young earl. These, in obedience to their master’s orders, called off the dogs, unstopped the earths, warned off the riders, and laughed at the ecclesiastical thunder of the prelate, flung at them in open field. Edmund, finding it impossible to overcome the opposition of the men, addressed himself to the master, summarily devoting him ad inferos for daring to interfere with the prelatic pastimes. Nothing daunted, the young earl, who would gladly have permitted the archbishop to hunt in his company, whenever so disposed, but who would not allow the head of the church in England to act in the woods of Arundel as if he were also lord of the land, made appeal to the only competent court—that of the Pope. The contending parties went over and pleaded their most respective causes personally; the earl with calmness, as feeling that he had right on his side; Edmund with easy arrogance, springing from a conviction that the Pontiff would not give a layman a triumph over a priest. The archbishop, however, was mistaken. He not only lost his cause, but he was condemned in the expenses; and if any one thinks that this decree checked him in trespassing, such an idea would show that the holder of it knew little of the spirit which moved prelates fond of hunting. The archbishop became the most confirmed poacher in the country; and if he did not spoil the knight’s sport by riding in advance of the hounds with a red herring, he had resort to means as efficacious for marring the pleasures of others in the chase. He affected, too, to look down upon the earl as one inferior to him in degree, and when they encountered at court, the prelate exhibited no more courtesy toward the gallant knight than was manifested by Lord Cowley in Paris toward the English Exhibition Commissioners, when the mere men of intellect were kept at what the peer thought a proper distance by the mere men of rank.

There is, however, no lack of instances of young knights themselves being brought up in arrogance and wilfulness. This sort of education lasted longer, perhaps, in France than elsewhere. As late as the last century this instruction prevailed, particularly where the pupil was intended for the army. Thus, the rearing of the little Vidame d’Amiens affords us an illustration. He was awkward and obstinate, but he might have been cured of both defects, had his mother been permitted to have some voice in his education. She was the last to be consulted, or rather, was never consulted at all. The more the little man was arrogant, the more delighted were his relatives with such manifestation of his spirit; and one day, when he dealt to his aunt, the Marquise de Belliere Plessis, a box of the ear which sent the old lady staggering, her only remark was, “My dear, you should never strike me with the left hand.” The courteous Vidame mortally hated his tutor, and expressed such a desire to kill him, that the pedagogue was asked to allow the little savage to believe that he had accomplished the desired act of homicide. Accordingly, a light musket was placed in the boy’s hands, from which the ball had been drawn, unknown to him, and with this, coming suddenly upon his instructor, who feigned the surprise he did not feel, the Vidame discharged the piece full at the breast of his monitor and friend. The servile sage pretended to be mortally wounded, and acted death upon the polished floor. He was quietly got rid of, and a pension of four hundred francs, just sixteen pounds a year, rewarded his stupid servility. The little chevalier was as proud as Fighting Fitzgerald of having, as he supposed, “killed his man.”

Let us return to earlier times for illustrations of the knight at home, and also abroad. There is no lack of such illustration in the adventures of Fulke Fitzwarren. Fulke was one of the outlawed barons of the reign of King John. In his youth, he was brought up with the four sons of King Henry; he was much beloved by them all, except John. “It happened that John and Fulke were sitting all alone in a chamber playing at chess; and John took the chess-board, and struck Fulke with a great blow. Fulke felt himself hurt, raised his foot and struck John in the middle of the stomach; and his head flew against the wall, and he became all weak, and fainted. Fulke was in consternation; but he was glad that there was nobody in the chamber but they two, and he rubbed John’s ears, who recovered from his fainting fit, and went to the king his father, and made a great complaint. ‘Hold your tongue, wretch,’ said the king, ‘you are always quarrelling. If Fulke did anything but good to you, it must have been by your own desert;’ and he called his master, and made him beat him finely and well for complaining. John was much enraged against Fulke, so that he could never afterward love him heartily.”

The above, as has been remarked, evinces how little respect there was in those early times for royal authority and the doctrine of non-resistance. But it may be observed, that even in these more polite times, were the heir-apparent to strike a playfellow, his royal highness would probably meet in return with as ready-handed, if not quite so rough a correction as was inflicted upon John. The latter could not forgive a bold companion of his boyhood, as James I. did, in subsequent times, with regard to “Jamie Slates.” On the contrary, when John became king, he plotted with as unscrupulous a person as himself, to deprive Fulke of his estate. The conversation between the king and his confederate, Moris de Powis, was overheard; and what came of it is thus told in the history of Fulke Fitzwarren, as edited by Thomas Wright Esq., for the Warton Club:—

“There was close by a knight who had heard all the conversation between the king and Moris, and he went in haste to Sir Fulke, and told him that the king was about to confirm by his charter, to Sir Moris, the lands to which he had right. Fulke and his four brothers came before the king, and prayed that they might have the common law and the lands to which they had claim and right, as the inheritance of Fulke; and they prayed that the king would receive from them a hundred pounds, on condition that he should grant them the award of his court of gain and loss. The king told them that what he had granted to Sir Moris, he would hold to it whoever might be offended or who not. At length Sir Moris spoke to Sir Fulke, and said, ‘Sir Knight, you are a great fool to challenge my lands; if you say that you have a right to White-Town, you lie; and if we were not in the king’s presence I would have proved it on your body.’ Sir William, Fulke’s brother, without a word more, sprang forward and struck Sir Moris with his fist in the middle of his face, that it became all bloody; knights interfered that no more hurt was done; then said Sir Fulke to the king: ‘Sir King, you are my liege-lord, and to you was I bound by fealty, as long as I was in your service, and as long as I held the lands of you; and you ought to maintain me in right, and you fail me in right and common law; and never was he good king who denied his frank tenants law in his court; wherefore I return you your homages:’ and with this word, he departed from the court and went to his hostel.”

Fulke was most unjustly exiled, but after a while he returned to England, wandered about in various disguises, and at length, with a ripe project, settled down as a collier or charcoal-burner in Windsor Forest. I will once more draw from Mr. Wright’s edition of this knightly biography for what ensued.

“At length came the king with three knights, all on foot to Fulke, where he was arranging his fire. When Fulke saw the king, he knew him well enough, and he cast the fork from his hand and saluted his lord and went on his knees before him very humbly. The king and his three knights had great laughter and game at the breeding and bearing of the collier. They stood there very long. ‘Sir Vilain,’ said the king, ‘have you seen no stag or doe pass here?’ ‘Yes, my lord, awhile ago.’ ‘What beast did you see?’ ‘Sir, my lord, a horned one; and it had long horns.’ ‘Where is it?’ ‘Sir, my lord, I know very well how to lead you to where I saw it.’ ‘Onward then, Sir Vilain, and we will follow you.’ ‘Sir,’ said the collier, ‘shall I take my fork in my hand? for if it were taken I should have thereby a great loss.’ ‘Yea, Vilain, if you will.’ Fulke took the great fork of iron in his hand and led the king to shoot; for he had a very handsome bow. ‘Sir, my lord,’ said Fulke, ‘will you please to wait, and I will go into the thicket and make the beast come this way by here?’ ‘Yea,’ said the king. Fulke did hastily spring into the thick of the forest; and commanded his company hastily to seize upon King John, for ‘I have brought him there only with three knights; and all his company is on the other side of the forest.’ Fulke and his company leaped out of the thicket, and rushed upon the king and seized him at once. ‘Sir King,’ said Fulke, ‘now I have you in my power, such judgment I will execute on you as you would on me, if you had taken me.’ The king trembled with fear for he had great dread of Fulke.”

There is here, perhaps, something of the romantic history, but with a substantiality of truth. In the end, Fulke, who we are told was really one of the barons to whom we owe Magna Charta, and who was anathematized by the pope, and driven into exile again and again, got the better of all his enemies, pope and king included. There are two traditions touching his death. One is, that he survived to the period of the battle of Lewes, where he was one of a body of Henry the Third’s friends who were drowned in the adjacent river. The other tells a very different story, and is probably nearer the truth. We are inclined to think with Mr. Wright, the editor of the biographical history in question, that he who was drowned near Lewes, was the son of Fulke. We add the following account, less because of its detail touching the death of the old knight than as having reference to how knights lived, moved, and had their being, in the period referred to:—

“Fulke and Lady Clarice his wife, one night, were sleeping together in their chamber; and the lady was asleep, and Fulke was awake, and thought of his youth; and repented much in his heart for his trespasses. At length, he saw in the chamber so great a light, that it was wonderful; and he thought what could it be? And he heard a voice, as it were, of thunder in the air, and it said:—‘Vassal, God has granted thy penance, which is better here than elsewhere.’ At that word the lady awoke, and saw the great light, and covered her face for fear. At length this light vanished. And after this light Fulke could never see more, but he was blind all his days. Then Fulke was very hospitable and liberal, and he caused the king’s road to be turned through his hall at his manor of Alleston, in order no stranger might pass without having meat or lodging, or other honor or goods of his. This Fulke remained seven years blind, and suffered well his penance. Lady Clarice died and was buried at the New Abbey; after whose death Fulke lived but a year, and died at the White-town; and in great honor was he interred at the New Abbey—on whose soul may God have mercy. Near the altar is the body. God have mercy on us all, alive and dead. Amen!”

The religious sentiment was strong in all Norman knights, but not more so, perhaps, than in the wild chivalry of North America, when first its painted heroes heard of the passion and death of Christ. Charlevoix tells us of an Iroquois, who, on hearing of the crucifixion, exclaimed with the feeling of a Christian crusader, “Oh, if I had been there!” Precisely such an exclamation was once made by a Norman knight, as he listened to a monk narrating the great sacrifice on Mount Calvary. The more savage warrior, however, has always had the more poetical feeling. Witness the dying request of a young Indian chief, also noticed by Charlevoix. The dying victor asked to be buried in a blue robe, because that was the color of the sky: the fashion, with many Norman knights, of being interred in a robe and cowl of a monk, had far less of elevated feeling for its motive.

Having shown something of what the knight did at home, let us contemplate also what he taught there, by precept, if not by example. There was a knight who was known by the title of “the White Knight,” whose name was De la Tour Landay, who was a contemporary of Edward the Black Prince, and who is supposed to have fought at Poictiers. He, is, however, best known, or at least equally well known, as the author of a work entitled “Le Livre du Chevalier de la Tour Landay.” This book was written, or dictated by him, for the especial benefit of his two daughters, and for the guidance of young ladies generally. It is extremely indelicate in parts, and in such wise gives no very favorable idea of the young ladies who could bear such instruction as is here imparted. The Chevalier performed his authorship after a very free and easy fashion. He engaged four clerical gentlemen, strictly designated as “two priests and two clerks,” whose task it was to procure for him all the necessary illustrative materials, such as anecdotes, apophthegms, and such like. These were collected from all sources, sacred and profane—from the Bible down to any volume, legendary or historical, that would suit his purpose. These he worked mosaically together, adding such wise saw, moral, counsel, or sentiment, as he deemed the case most especially required;—with a sprinkling of stories of his own collecting. A critic in the “Athenæum,” commenting upon this curious volume, says with great truth, that it affords good materials for an examination into the morals and manners of the times. “Nothing,” says the reviewer, “is urged for adoption upon the sensible grounds of right or wrong, or as being in accordance with any admitted moral standard, but because it has been sanctified by long usage, been confirmed by pretended miracle, or been approved by some superstition which outrages common sense.”

In illustration of these remarks it is shown how the Chevalier recommends a strict observation of the meagre days, upon the ground that the dissevered head of a soldier was once enabled to call for a priest, confess, and listen to the absolution, because the owner of the head had never transgressed the Wednesday and Friday’s fasts throughout his lifetime. Avoidance of the seven capital sins is enjoined upon much the same grounds. Gluttony, for instance, is to be avoided, for the good reason, that a prattling magpie once betrayed a lady who had eaten a dish of eels, which her lord had intended for some guests whom he wished particularly to honor. Charity is enjoined, not because the practice thereof is placed by the great teacher, not merely above Hope, but before Faith, but because a lady who, in spite of priestly warning, gave the broken victuals of her household to her dogs rather than to the poor, being on her death-bed, was leaped upon by a couple of black dogs, and that these having approached her lips, the latter became as black as a coal. The knight the more insists upon the proper exercise of charity, seeing that he has unquestionable authority in support of the truth of the story. That is, he knew a lady that had known the defunct, and who said she had seen the dogs. Implicit obedience of wives to husbands is insisted on, with a forcibly illustrative argument. A burgher’s wife had answered her lord sharply, in place of silently listening to reproof, and meekly obeying his command. The husband, thereupon, dealt his wife a blow with his clenched fist, which smashed her nose, and felled her to the ground. “It is reason and right,” says the mailed Mrs. Ellis of his time, “that the husband should have the word of command, and it is an honor to the good wife to hear him, and hold her peace, and leave all high talking to her lord; and so, on the contrary, it is a great shame to hear a woman strive with her husband, whether right or wrong, and especially before other people.” Publius Syrus says, that a good wife commands by obeying, but the Chevalier evidently had no idea of illustrating the Latin maxim, or recommending the end which it contemplates. The knight places the husband as absolute lord; and his doing so, in conjunction with the servility which he demands on the part of the wife, reminds me of the saying of Toulotte, which is as true as anything enjoined by the moralizing knight, namely, that “L’obéissance aux volontés d’un chef absolu assimile l’homme à la brute.” This, with a verbal alteration, may be applied as expressive of the effect of the knight’s teaching in the matter of feminine obedience. The latter is indeed in consonance with the old heathen ideas. Euripides asserts, that the most intolerable wife in the world is a wife who philosophizes, or supports her own opinion. We are astonished to find a Christian knight thus agreed with a heathen poet—particularly as it was in Christian times that the maxim was first published, which says, “Ce que femme veut, Dieu le veut!”

This sentiment reminds me, that it is time to show how the knight was affected by the tender passion, how it was sometimes his glory and sometimes his shame. He was sometimes the victim, and at others the victimizer.

LOVE IN CHEVALIERS, AND CHEVALIERS IN
LOVE.

“How pleasing are the steps we lovers make,

When in the paths of our content we pace

To meet our longings!”—The Hog hath Lost his Purse.

Butler, in his Hudibras (part iii. cant. 1), has amusingly illustrated the feeling which moved knights-errant, and the particular object they had in view: “the ancient errant knights,” he says:—

“Won all their ladies’ hearts in fights,

And cuts whole giants into fritters,

To put them into amorous twitters;

Whose stubborn bowels scorned to yield,

Until their gallants were half killed:

But when their bones were drubbed so sore

They durst not win one combat more,

The ladies’ hearts began to melt,

Subdued by blows their lovers felt.

So Spanish heroes with their lances

At once wound bulls and ladies’ fancies.”

However willing a knight may have been to do homage to his lady, the latter, if she truly regarded the knight, never allowed his homage to her to be paid at the cost of injury to his country’s honor or his own. An instance of this is afforded us in the case of Bertrand de Guesclin. There never was man who struck harder blows when he was a bachelor; but when he went a wooing, and still more after he had wed the incomparable Tiphania, he lost all care for honor in the field, and had no delight but in the society of his spouse. The lady, however, was resolved that neither his sword nor his reputation should acquire rust through any fault or beauty of hers. She rallied him soundly on his home-keeping propensities, set them in contrast with the activity of his bachelor-days, and the renown acquired by it, and forthwith talked him out of her bower and into his saddle.

The English did not profit by the lady’s eloquence, for our forefathers never had a more gallant or more difficult adversary to deal with than Bertrand. Living, his name was a terror to them; and dying, he had the sympathy of those who had been his foes. Charles V. made him Constable of France, and appointed him a grave at the foot of his own royal tomb. De Guesclin would never have been half the man he was but for the good sense of his wife Tiphania.

There are many instances in romance which would seem to imply, that so strained was the sentiment which bound knights to respect ladies, it compelled them not to depart therefrom even in extreme cases, involving lightness of conduct and infidelity. The great northern chiefs, who were a sort of very rough knights in their way, were, however, completely under the distaff. Their wives could divorce themselves at will. Thus, in Erysbiggia Saga we read of Borck, an Icelandic chief, who, bringing home a guest whom his wife not only refused to welcome, but attempted to stab, administered such correction to his spouse in return, that the lady called in witnesses and divorced herself on the spot. Thereupon the household goods were divided among them, and the affair was rapidly and cheaply managed without the intervention of an Ecclesiastical Court. More modern chivalry would not have tolerated the idea of correcting even a faithless, much less a merely angry spouse. Indeed, the amatory principle was quite as strong as the religious one; and in illustration thereof, it has been remarked that the knight must have been more than ordinarily devout who had God on his right hand (the place of honor), and his lady on his left.

To ride at the ring was then the pleasantest pastime for knights; and ladies looked on and applauded the success, or laughed at the failures. The riding, without attempting to carry off the ring, is still common enough at our fairs, for children; but in France and Germany, it is seriously practised in both its simple and double forms, by persons of all ages, who glide round to the grinding of an organ, and look as grave as if they were on desperate business.

It is an undoubted matter of fact, that although a knight was bound to be tender in his gallantry, there were some to be found whose wooing was of the very roughest; and there were others who, if not rough, were rascally.

The old Rue des Lombards, in Paris, was at one time occupied exclusively by the “professed pourpoint-makers,” as a modern tailor might say. They carried on a flourishing trade, especially in times when men, like Bassompierre, thought nothing of paying, or promising to pay, fourteen thousand crowns for a pourpoint. When I say the street was thus occupied exclusively, I must notice an exception. There were a few other residents in it, the Jew money-lenders or usurers; and when I hear the old French proverb cited “patient as a Lombard,” I do not know whether it originally applied to the tailors or the money-lenders, both of whom were extensively cheated by their knightly customers. Here is an illustration of it, showing that all Jessicas have not been as lucky as Shylock’s daughter, and that some Jews have been more cruelly treated than Shylock’s daughter’s father—whom I have always considered as one of the most ill-used of men.

In the Rue des Lombards there dwelt a wealthy Jew, who put his money out at interest, and kept his daughter under lock and key at home. But the paternal Jew did not close his shutters, and the Lombard street Jessica, sitting all day at the window, attracted the homage of many passers-by. These were chiefly knights who came that way to be measured for pourpoints; and no knight was more attracted by the black eyes of the young lady in question, than the Chevalier Giles de Pontoise. That name indeed is one of a celebrated hero of a burlesque tragedy, but the original knight was “my Beverley.”

Giles wore the showiest pourpoint in the world; for which he had obtained long credit. It struck him that he would call upon the Jew to borrow a few hundred pistoles, and take the opportunity to also borrow the daughter. He felt sure of succeeding in both exploits; for, as he remarked, if he could not pay the money he was about to borrow, he could borrow it of his more prudent relatives, and so acquit himself of his debt. With regard to the lady, he had serenaded her, night after night, till she looked as ready to leap down to him as the Juliets who played to Barry’s Romeo;—and he had sung “Ecco ridente il sole,” or what was then equivalent to it, accompanied by his guitar, and looking as ridiculous the while, without being half so silvery-toned as Rubini in Almaviva, warbling his delicious nonsense to Rosina. Our Jew, like old Bartolo, was destined to pay the musician.

Giles succeeded in extracting the money required from the usurer, and he had like success in inducing the daughter to trust to his promises. He took the latter to Pontoise, deceived her by a mock-marriage, and spent all that he had borrowed from the father, in celebrating his pretended nuptials with the daughter. There never was a more recreant knight than Giles de Pontoise.

However, bills will become due, if noble or simple put their names to them, and the Jew claimed at once both his debt and his daughter. He failed in obtaining his money, but the lady he carried off by violence, she herself exhibiting considerable reluctance to leave the Château de Pontoise for the paternal dungeon in the Rue des Lombards.

This step brought Giles to a course of reflection. It was not of that quality which his confessor would have recommended, but rather of a satanic aspect. “In the usurer’s house,” thought Giles, “live the tailor to whom I am indebted for my pourpoint, the Jew who holds my promise to pay, and the pretty daughter of whom I have been so unjustly deprived. I will set fire to the house. If I burn tailor, money-lender, and the proofs of my liabilities, I shall have done a good night’s work, if I therewith can carry off little Jessica.”

Thereupon, Giles went down to the Rue des Lombards, and with such aid as was then easily purchasable, he soon wrapped the Jew’s dwelling in flames. Shylock looked to his papers and money-bags. The knight groped through the smoke and carried off the daughter. The Jew still held the promissory note of the Knight of Pontoise, whose incendiary act, however, had destroyed half of one side of the Rue des Lombards. Therewith had perished reams of bonds which made slaves of chevaliers to Jew money-lenders. “Sic vos non vobis,” thought Giles, “but at all events, if he has my bill, I have possession of Jessica.”

The Jew held as much to his daughter as to his ducats. He persecuted the pretended husband with a pertinacity which eventually overcame Giles de Pontoise. A compromise was effected. The knight owed the usurer three thousand golden crowns, and had stolen from him his only daughter. Giles agreed to surrender his “lady,” on condition that the money-lender should sign an acquittance of the debt. This done, the Jew and daughter walked homeward, neither of them well satisfied with the result of their dealings with a knight.

The burnt-out Lombarder turned round at the threshold of the knight’s door, with a withering sneer, like Edmund Kean’s in Shylock when he was told to make haste and go home, and begin to be a Christian. “It is little but sorrow I get by you, at all events,” said the Jew to the Chevalier.

“Do you make so light of your grandson?” asked Giles. And with this Parthian dart he shut his door in the face of the trio who were his victims.

This knight was a victimizer; but below we have an illustration of knights victimized through too daring affection.

The great Karloman may be said to have been one of those crowned knights who really had very little of the spirit of chivalry in him, with respect to ladies. He married, successfully, two wives, but to neither did he allow the title of Empress. It is, however, not with his two wives, but his two daughters and their chevaliers par amours, with whom we have now to do.

In the Rue de la Harpe, in Paris, may be seen the remains, rather than the ruins, of the old building erected by the Emperor Julian, and which was long known by the name of the “old palace.” It served as a palace about a thousand years and half a century ago, when one night there drew up before it a couple of knights, admirably mounted, and rather roughly escorted by a mob, who held up their lanterns to examine the riders, and handled their pikes as if they were more ready to massacre the knights than to marshal them.

All the civility they received on this February night was of a highly equivocal nature. They were admitted, indeed, into the first and largest court of the palace, but the old seneschal locked and barred the gate behind them. An officer too approached to bid them welcome, but he had hardly acquitted himself of his civil mission when he peremptorily demanded of them the surrender of their swords.

“We are the King’s own messengers,” said one of the knights, rather puzzled at the reception vouchsafed to them;—“and we have, moreover, a despatch to deliver, written in our gracious master’s own hand,” remarked the second knight.

“Vive Louis le Debonnaire!” exclaimed the seneschal; “how fares it with our sovereign?”

“As well as can be,” was the reply, “with a monarch who has been engaged six whole weeks at Aix, in burying his father and predecessor, Charlemagne. Here is his missive.” This missive was from Louis the Frolicsome, or Louis the Good-Natured, or Louis of Fair Aspect. He was morose, wittily disposed, and ill-featured;—but then the poet-laureate had given him his fine name; and the king wore it as if it had been fairly won. He had clipped, shaved, and frocked, all his natural brothers, and then shut them up in monasteries. He had no more respect for treaties than he had for Mohammed, and by personal example he taught perjury and rebellion to those whom he cruelly punished when they imitated their exalted instructor. The seneschal perused the letter addressed to him by his royal correspondent, and immediately requested the two knights to enter the palace itself.

They were ushered into a lofty-arched apartment on the ground floor, which ordinarily served as an ante-room for the guards on duty; it was for the moment, however, empty. They who have visited the old Palais de Thermes, as it is called, have, doubtlessly, remarked and admired this solid relic of the past.

After entering, the seneschal once more lifted the despatch to the flambeau, read it through, looked at the seal, then at the knights, coughed uneasily, and began to wear an air of dislike for some duty imposed upon him. He repeated, as if he were learning by rote, the names Raoul de Lys and Robert de Quercy. “Those are our names,” observed the first; “we have ridden hither by the king’s orders to announce his coming; and having done so, let us have fire and food, lest we be famished and frozen before he arrives.”

“Hem!” muttered the seneschal, “I am extremely sorry; but, according to this letter, you are my prisoners, and till to-morrow you must remain in this apartment;” and, seeing them about to remonstrate, he added, “You will be quite at liberty here, except, of course, that you can’t get out; you will have separate quarters to-morrow.”

It was in vain that they inquired the reason for their detention, the nature of the charge alleged against them, or what they had further to expect. The seneschal dryly referred them to the monarch. He himself knew nothing more than his orders, and by them he was instructed to keep the two friends in close confinement till the sovereign’s arrival. “On second thoughts,” said the seneschal, “I must separate you at once. There is the bell in the tower of St. Jacques ringing midnight, and to-morrow will be upon us, before its iron tongue has done wagging. I really must trouble one of you gentlemen to follow me.” The voice was not so civil as the words, and after much parleying and reluctance, the two friends parted. Robert bade Raoul be of good cheer; and Raoul, who was left behind, whispered that it would be hard, indeed, if harm was to come to them under such a roof.

The roof, however, of this royal palace, looked very much like the covering of a place in which very much harm might be very quietly effected. But there were dwelling there two beings who might have been taken for spirits of good, so winning, so natural, and so loveable were the two spirits in question. They were no other than the two daughters of Charlemagne, Gisla and Rotrude. The romancers, who talk such an infinite deal of nonsense, say of them that their sweet-scented beauty was protected by the prickles of principle. The most rapid of analysers may see at once that this was no great compliment to the ladies. It was meant, however, to be the most refined flattery; and the will was accepted for the deed.

Now, the two knights loved the two ladies, and if they had not, neither Father Daniel nor Sainte Foix could have alluded to their amorous history; nor Father Pasquale, of the Convent of the Arminians in Venice, have touched it up with some of the hues of romance, nor Roger de Beauvoir have woven the two together, nor unworthy ægomet have applied it to the illustration of daring lovers.

These two girls were marvellously high-spirited. They had been wooed by emperors; but feeling no inclination to answer favorably to the wooing, Charlemagne generously refused to put force upon their affections, and bade them love only where their hearts directed them. This “license” gave courage to numberless nobles of various degrees, but Rotrude and Gisla said nay to all their regular advances. The Princesses were, in fact, something like Miss Languish, thought love worth nothing without a little excitement, and would have considered elopement as the proper preceder of the nuptial ceremony. Their mother, Hildegarda, was an unexceptional woman, but, like good Queen Charlotte, who let her daughters read Polly Honeycombe as well as Hannah More, she was a little confused in the way she taught morals, and the young Princesses fell in love, at the first opportunity, with gallant gentlemen of—as compared with princesses—rather low degree. In this respect, there is a parallel between the house of Karloman and some other houses of more modern times.

Louis le Debonnaire had, as disagreeable brothers will have, an impertinent curiosity respecting his sisters’ affairs. He was, here, the head of his family, and deemed himself as divinely empowered to dispose of the hearts of these ladies, as of the families and fortunes of his people. He had learned the love-passages that had been going on, and he had hinted that when he reached the old palace in Paris, he would make it as calmly cold as a cloister, and that there were disturbed hearts there, which should be speedily restored to a lasting tranquillity. The young ladies did not trouble themselves to read the riddle of a brother who was for ever affecting much mystery. But they prepared to welcome his arrival, and seemed more than ordinarily delighted when they knew that intelligence of his approaching coming had been brought by the two knights then in the castle.

Meanwhile, Raoul de Lys sat shivering on a stone bench in the great guard-room. He subsequently addressed himself to a scanty portion of skinny wild boar, very ill-cooked; drank, with intense disgust, part of a flask of hydromel of the very worst quality; and then having gazed on the miniature of Rotrude, which he took from beneath the buff jerkin under his corslet, he apostrophized it till he grew sleepy, upon which he blew out his lamp, and threw himself on an execrably hard couch. He was surprised to find that he was not in the dark. There was very good reason for the contrary.

As he blew out his lamp, a panel in the stone wall glided noiselessly open, and Robert de Quercy appeared upon the threshold—one hand holding a lamp, the other leading a lady. The lady was veiled; and she and the knight hurriedly approached Raoul, who as hurriedly rushed forward to meet them. He had laid his armor by; and they who recollect Mr. Young in Hotspur, and how he looked in tight buff suit, before he put his armor on, may have some idea of the rather ridiculous guise in which Raoul appeared to the lady. But she was used to such sights, and had not time to remark it even had she not been so accustomed.

Raoul observing that Robert was accompanied only by Gisla, made anxious inquiry for Rotrude. Gisla in a few words told him that her sister would speedily be with them, that there was certain danger, even death, threatening the two cavaliers, and probable peril menacing—as Gisla remarked, with a blush—those who loved them. The King, she added, had spoken angrily of coming to purify the palace, as she had heard from Count Volrade, who appears to have been a Polonius, as regards his office, with all the gossip, but none of the good sense, of the old chamberlain in Denmark.

“Death to us!” exclaimed Robert. “Accursed be the prince who transgresses the Gospel admonition, not to forget his own or his father’s friends.” “We were the favored servants of Charlemagne,” said Raoul. “We were of his closest intimacy,” exclaimed Robert. “Never,” interrupted Raoul, “did he ascend his turret to watch the stars, without summoning us, his nocturnal pages, as he called us, to his side.” “He dare not commit such a crime; for the body of Charlemagne is scarcely sealed down in its tomb; and Louis has not a month’s hold of the sceptre.”

“He holds it firmly enough, however, to punish villany,” exclaimed Louis himself, as he appeared in the doorway leading to a flight of stone stairs by which Gisla had indicated the speedy appearance of Rotrude.

And here I would beseech my readers to believe that if the word “tableau!” ought to be written at this situation, and if it appears to them to be too melo-dramatic to be natural, I am not in fault. I refer them to all the histories and romances in which this episode in knightly story is told, and in all they will find that Louis makes his appearance exactly as I have described, and precisely like Signor Tamburini in the great scene of Lucrezia Borgia.

Louis having given expression to his startling bit of recitative, dragged forward Rotrude, whom he had held behind him, by the wrist. The background was occupied by four guards, wearing hoods; and I can not think of them without being reminded of those same four old guards, with M. Desmousseaux at their head, who always represented the Greek or Roman armies upon the stage of the Théâtre Français, when Talma was the Nero or the Sylla, the Orestes or the Capitolinus of the night.

With some allusion to Rotrude as a sacred dove, and to himself as a bird-catcher, Louis handed his sister to a stone bench, and then grew good-natured in his remarks. This sudden benevolence gave a chill to the entire company. They turned as pale as any Russian nobleman to whom Nicholas was extraordinarily civil.

“We know the winding passages of the palace of Thermes,” said Louis, laughingly, “as well as our sisters; and I have not gone through them to-night for the purpose of terrifying the sister whom I encountered there, or the other sister whom I see here. I am a kind-hearted brother, and am marvellously well-disposed. I need only appeal to these four gentlemen of my guard, who will presently take off their hoods, and serve as witnesses this night in a little ceremony having reference to my dear Rotrude.”

“A ceremony! this night!” exclaimed the two princesses.

“Ay, by the nails of the cross! Two ceremonies. You shall both be married forthwith. I will inaugurate my reign by a double wedding, here in the old palace of Thermes. You, Gisla, shall espouse Robert, Count de Quercy, and you, Rotrude, shall wed with Raoul, Baron de Lys. You might have aimed higher, but they are gallant gentlemen, friends of my deceased sire; and, by my sooth, the nuptials shall not lack state and ceremony! Here are our wedding-gifts to the bridegrooms.”

He pointed to two showy suits of armor, the pieces of which were carried by the four guards. The knights were in a dream of delight. They vowed eternal gratitude to the most noble of emperors and unparalleled of brothers.

“We have no great faith in human gratitude,” said Louis, “and shall not expect from you more than is due. And you, my sisters,” added he, “retire for awhile; put on what you will; but do not tarry here at the toilette of men-at-arms, like peasant-girls looking at the equipping of two pikemen.”

The two princesses withdrew; and there would have been a smile upon their lips, only that they suspected their brother. Hoping the best, however, they kissed the tips of their rosy fingers to the knights, and tripped away, like two pets of the ballet. They were true daughters of their sire, who reckoned love-passages as even superior to stricken fields. He was not an exemplary father, nor a faithful husband. His entourage was not of the most respectable; and in some of his journeys he was attended by the young wife of one of his own cavaliers, clad in cavalier costume. It was a villanously reprobate action, not the less so that Hermengarde was living. The mention of it will disgust every monarch in Europe who reads my volume; and I am sure that it will produce no such strong sensation of reproof anywhere as in the bosom of an admirable personage “over the water.”

The two princesses, then, had not so much trouble from the prickles of principle as the romances told of them. But, considering the example set them by their imperial father, they were really very tolerable princesses, under the circumstances.

“Don your suits, gentlemen!” exclaimed the king.

The four guards advanced with the separate pieces of armor, at which the two knights gazed curiously for a moment or two, as two foxes might at a trap in which lay a much-desired felicity. They were greatly delighted, yet half afraid. The monarch grew impatient, and the knights addressed themselves at once to their adornment. They put aside their own armor, and with the assistance of the four mute gentlemen-at-arms they fitted on the brassards or arm-pieces, which became them as though the first Milainer who ever dressed knight had taken their measure. With some little trouble they were accoutred, less as became bridegrooms than barons going to battle; and this done, they took their seats, at a sign from the king, who bade the four gentlemen come to an end with what remained of the toilette.

The knights submitted, not without some misgiving, to the services of the four mysterious valets! and, in a short time, the preparations were complete, even to the helmet with the closed visor. This done, the knights took their places, or were led rather to two high-backed oaken chairs. As soon as they were seated there, the four too-officious attendants applied their hands to the closed head-pieces; and in a very brief space the heads of the cavaliers sunk gently upon their breasts, as if they were in deep slumber or as deep meditation.

Two o’clock rang out from the belfry of St. Jacques, as the two brides entered. The king pointed with a smile to the bridegrooms, and left the apartment with his attendants. The ladies thought that the lovers exhibited little ardor or anxiety to meet them; for they remained motionless on their oaken chairs. The daughters of Charlemagne advanced, half-timidly, half-playfully; and, at length, finding the knights not disposed to address them, gently called to each by his name. Raoul and Robert continued motionless and mute. They were in fact dead. They had been strangled or suffocated in a peculiar sort of armor, which had been sent to Charlemagne from Ravenna, in return for a jewelled vase presented by that emperor to the ancient city. “In 1560,” says Monsieur Roger de Beauvoir, himself quoting an Italian manuscript, there were several researches made in this part of the palace of Thermes, one result of which was the discovery of a ‘casque à soufflet,’ all the openings in which could be closed in an instant by a simple pressure of the finger on a spring. At the same instant the lower part of the neck-piece tightened round the throat, and the patient was disposed of. “In this helmet,” adds the author, “was found the head of a man, well preserved, with beard and teeth admirable for their beauty.” I think, however, that in this matter M. de Beauvoir proves a little too much.

Father Daniel, in his history notices the vengeance of Louis le Debonnaire against two young nobles who were, reputedly, the lovers of Gisla and Rotrude. The details of the act of vengeance have been derived from an Italian source; and it is said that an Italian monk, named Pagnola, had some prominent part in this dreary drama, impelled thereto by a blow dealt to him at the hands of Raoul, by way of punishment for some contemptuous phrases which the monk had presumed to apply to the great Charlemagne.

Love and sword-blades seem to have been as closely connected as “Trousseaux et Layettes,” which are always named together in the shop-fronts of a Parisian “Lingere.” There was once an ample field for the accommodation of both the sentiments of love and bravery in the old Chaussée d’Antin, when it was merely a chaussée or highway, and not the magnificent street it now is. It was, down even to comparatively modern times, the resort of lovers of every degree, from dukes and duchesses to common dragoons and dairymaids. They were not always, however, under this strict classification.

But whatever classification or want of it there may have been, there was a part of the road which was constantly the scene of bloody encounters. This was at the narrow bridge of Arcans. Here if two cavaliers met, each with a lady at his side, it was a matter of honor not to give way. On the contrary, the latter was to be forced at the point of the sword. While the champions were contending, the ladies would scarcely affect to faint; they would stand aside, remain unconcerned on their jennets or mules, till the two simpletons had pinked one another; or lounge in their cumbrous coaches till the lovers limped back to them.

It was on this bridge, of which no vestige now remains, not even in a museum, that the Count de Fiesque one evening escorting Madame de Lionne, encountered M. de Tallard, who was chaperoning Louison d’Arquien. Each couple was in a carriage, and neither would make way for the other to pass. Thereupon the two cavaliers leaped from their coaches, drew their swords, planted their feet firmly on the ground, and began slashing at each other like two madmen, to the great delight of a large crowd who enjoyed nothing so much as the sight of two noble gentlemen cutting one another’s throats.

The ladies, meanwhile, flourished their handkerchiefs from their respective carriage-windows, for the encouragement of their champions. Now and then each laughed aloud when her particular friend had made a more than ordinary successful thrust; and each was generous enough to applaud any especial dexterity, even when her own lover thereby bloodily suffered. The two foolish fellows only poked at each other with the more intensity. And when they had sufficiently slit their pourpoints and slashed their sleeves, the ladies, weary of waiting any longer for a more exciting denouement, rushed between the combatants, like the Sabine ladies between the contending hosts; each gentleman gallantly kissed the lady who did not belong to him; and the whole four gayly supped together, as though they had been the best friends in the world.

This incident fairly brings us to the questions of duelling and death, as illustrated by chivalry.