III.
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The good Froissart came here in the year 1388, having ridden and chatted about arms all along the route with the chevalier Messire Espaing de Lyon; he lodged in the inn of the Beautiful Hostess, which was then called the hotel of the Moon. The count Gaston Phoebus sent in all haste to seek him: “for he was the lord who of all the world the most gladly entertained the stranger in order to hear the news.” Froissart passed twelve weeks in his hotel: “for they made him good cheer and fed well his horses, and in all things also ordered well.”
Froissart is a child, and sometimes an old child. At that time thought was expanding, as in Greece in the time of Herodotus. But, while we feel that in Greece it is going on to unfold itself to the very end, we discover here that an obstacle checks it: there is a knot in the tree; the arrested sap can mount no higher. This knot is scholasticism.
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For, during three centuries already they had written in verse, and for two centuries in prose; after this long culture, see what a historian is Froissart. One morning he mounts on horseback with several valets, under a beautiful sun, and gallops onward; a lord meets him whom he accosts: “Sir, what is this castle?” The other tells him about the sieges, and what grand sword-thrusts were there exchanged. “Holy Mary,” cried Froissart, “but your words please me and do me a deal of good, while you tell them off to me! And you shall not lose them, for all shall be set in remembrance and chronicled in the history which I am pursuing.” Then he has explained to himself the kindred of the seigneur, his alliances, how his friends and enemies have lived and are dead, and the whole skein of the adventures interwoven during two centuries and in three countries. “And as soon as I had alighted at the hotels, on the road that we were following together, I wrote them down, were it evening or morning, for the better memory of them in times to come; for there is no such exact retentive as writing.” All is found here, the pell-mell and the hundred shifts of the conversations, the reflections, the little accidents of the journey. An old squire recounts to him mountain legends, how Pierre de Beam, having once killed an enormous bear, could no longer sleep in peace, but thenceforward he awaked each night, “making such a noise and such clatter that it seemed that all the devils in hell should have carried away everything and were inside with him.” Froissart judges that this bear was perhaps a knight turned into a beast for some misdeed; cites in support the story of Actæon, an “accomplished and pretty knight who was changed into a stag.” Thus goes his life and thus his history is composed; it resembles a tapestry of the period, brilliant and varied, full of hunting, of tournaments, battles and processions. He gives himself and his hearers the pleasure of imagining ceremonies and adventures; no other idea, or rather no idea. Of criticism, general considerations, reasoning upon man or society, counsels or forecast, there is no trace; it is a herald at arms who seeks to please curious eyes, the warlike spirit and the empty minds of robust knights, great eaters, lovers of thumps and pomps. Is it not strange, this barrenness of reason! In Greece, at the end of an hundred years, Thucydides, Plato and Xenophon, philosophy and science had appeared. By way of climax, read the verses of Froissart, those ballads, roundelays and virelays that he recited of evenings to the Count de Foix, “who took great solace in hearing them indeed,” the old rubbish of decadence, worn, affected allegories, the garrulousness of a broken-down pedant who amuses himself in composing wearisome turns of address. And the rest are all alike. Charles d’Orleans has a sort of faded grace and nothing-more, Christine de Pisan but an official solemnity.
Such feeble spirits want the force to give birth to general ideas; they are bowed down under the weight of those which have been hooked on to them.
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The cause is not far to seek; think of that stout cornific * doctor with leaden eyes, a confrère of Froissart, if you like, but how different! He holds in his hand his manual of canon-law, Peter the Lombard, a treatise on the syllogism. For ten hours a day he disputes in Baralipton on the hicaeity.
* Cornificien, a name given by Jean of Sarisberg to those
who disfigured dialectics by their extravagant, cornus
arguments.—Translator.
As soon as he became hoarse, he dipped his nose again into his yellow folio; his syllogisms and quiddities ended by making him stupid; he knew nothing about things or dared not consider them; he only wielded words, shook formulas together, bruised his own head, lost all common sense, and reasoned like a machine for Latin verses.* What a master for the sons of noblemen, and for keen poetic minds, and what an education was this labyrinth of dry logic and extravagant scholasticism. Tired, disgusted, irritated, stupefied, they forgot the ugly dream as soon as possible, ran in the open air, and thought only of the chase, of war and the ladies; they were not so foolish as to turn their eyes a second time towards their crabbed litany; if they did come back to it, that was out of vanity; they wanted to set some Latin fable in their songs, or some learned abstraction, without comprehending a word of it, donning it for fashion’s sake, as the ermine of learning. With us of today, general ideas spring up in every mind,—living and flourishing ones; among the laity of that time their root was cut off, and among the clergy there remained of them but a fagot of dead wood. And so mankind was only the better fitted for the life of the body and more capable of violent passions; with regard to this the style of Froissart, artless as it is, deceives us. We think we are listening to the pretty garrulousness of a child at play; beneath this prattle we must distinguish the rude voice of the combatants, bear-hunters and hunters of men too, and the broad, coarse hospitality of feudal manners.
* See the discourse of Jean Petit on the assassination of
the Duke of Orleans.
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At midnight the Count of Foix came to supper in the great hall. “Before him went twelve lighted torches, borne by twelve valets: and the same twelve torches were held before his table and gave much light unto the hall, which was full of knights and squires; and always there were plenty of tables laid out for any person who chose to sup.” It must have been an astonishing sight, to see those furrowed faces and powerful frames, with their furred robes and their justicoats streaked under the wavering flashes of the torches. One Christmas day, going into his gallery, he saw that there was but a small fire, and spoke of it aloud. Thereupon a knight, Ernauton d’Espagne, having looked out of the window, saw in the court a number of asses with “billets of wood for the use of the house. He seized the largest of these asses with his load, threw him over his shoulders and carried him up stairs” (there were twenty-four steps), “pushing through the crowd of knights and squires who were round the chimney, and flung ass and load, with his feet upward, on the dogs of the hearth, to the delight of the count, and the astonishment of all.” Here are the laughter and the amusement of barbaric giants. They wanted noise, and songs proportioned to it. Froissart tells of a banquet when bishops, counts, abbés, knights, nearly one hundred in number, were seated at table. “There were very many minstrels in the hall, as well those belonging to the count as to the strangers, who, at their leisure, played away their minstrelsy. Those of the duke de Touraine played so loud and so well that the count clothed them ‘with cloth of gold trimmed with ermine.’”
“This count,” says Froissart, “reigned prudently; in all things he was so perfect that one could not praise him too much. No great contemporary prince could compare with him in sense, honor and wisdom.” In that case the great princes of the day were not worth much. With justice and humanity, the good Froissart scarcely troubles himself; he finds murder perfectly natural; indeed, it was the custom; they were no more astonished at it, than at a snap of the jaws in a wolf. Man then resembled a beast of prey, and when a beast of prey has eaten up a sheep nobody is scandalized thereby. This excellent Count de Foix was an assassin, not once only, but ten times. For example, he coveted the castle of Lourdes, and so sent for the captain, Pierre Ernault, who had received it in trust for the prince of Wales. Pierre Ernault “became very thoughtful and doubtful whether to go or not.” At last he went, and the count demanded from him the castle of Lourdes. The knight thought awhile what answer to make. However, having well considered, he said: “My lord, in truth I owe you faith and homage, for I am a poor knight of your blood and country; but as for the castle of Lourdes, I will never surrender it to you. You have sent for me, and you may therefore do with me as you please. I hold the castle of Lourdes from the king of England, who has placed me there; and to no other person but to him will I ever surrender it.” The Count de Foix, on hearing this answer, was exceedingly wroth, and said, as he drew his dagger, “Ho, ho, dost thou then say so? By this head, thou hast not said it for nothing.” And, as he uttered these words, he struck him foully with the dagger, so that he wounded him severely in five places, and none of the barons or knights dared to interfere.
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The knight replied, “Ha, ha, my lord, this is not gentle treatment; you sent for me here, and are murdering me.” Having received these five strokes from the dagger, the count ordered him to be cast into the dungeon, which was done; and there he died, for he was ill-cured of his wounds. This dominance of sudden passion, this violence of first impulse, this flesh and blood emotion, and abrupt appeal to physical force, are cropping out continually in the people. At the slightest insult their eyes kindle and blows fall like hail.
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As we were leaving Dax, a diligence passed ours, grazing one of the horses. The conductor leaped down from his seat, a stake in his hand, and was going to fell his confrèr. Those lords lived and felt something like our conductors, and the Count de Foix was such an one.
I beg pardon of the conductors; I wrong them grievously. The count, not having the fear of the police before his eyes, came at once not to fisticuffs, but to stabs. His son Gaston, while on a visit to the king of Navarre, received a black powder which, according to the king, must forever reconcile the count and his wife; the youth took the powder in a little bag and concealed it in his breast; one day his bastard brother, Yvain, saw the bag while playing with him, wanted to have it, and afterward denounced him to the count. At this the count “began to have suspicions, for he was full of fancies,” and remained so until dinner-time, very thoughtful, haunted and harassed by sombre imaginings. Those stormy brains, filled by warfare and danger with dismal images, hastened to tumult and tempest. The youth came, and began to serve the dishes, tasting the meats, as was usual when the notion of poison was not far from any mind. The count cast his eyes upon him and saw the strings of the bag; the sight fired his veins and made his blood boil; he seized the youth, undid his pourpoint, cut the strings of the bag, and strewed some of the powder over a slice of bread, while the poor youth turned pale with fear, and began to tremble exceedingly. Then he called one of his dogs to him, and gave it him to eat. “The instant the dog had eaten a morsel his eyes rolled round in his head, and he died.” The count said nothing, but rose suddenly, and seizing his knife, threw himself upon his son. But the knights rushed in between them: “For God’s sake, my lord, do not be too hasty, but make further inquiries before you do any ill to your son.”
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The count heaped malediction and insult upon the youth, then suddenly leaped over the table, knife in hand, and fell upon him like a wild beast. But the knights and the squires fell upon their knees before him weeping, and saying: “Ah, ah! my lord, for Heaven’s sake do not kill Gaston; you have no other child.” With great difficulty he restrained himself, doubtless thinking that it was prudent to see if no one else had a part in the matter, and put the youth into the tower at Orthez.
He investigated then, but in a singular fashion, as if he were a famished wolf, wedded to a single idea, bruising himself against it mechanically and brutally, through murder and outcry, killing blindly and without reflecting that his killing is of no use to him. He had many of those who served his son arrested, and “put to death not less than fifteen after they had suffered the torture; and the reason he gave was, that it was impossible but they must have been acquainted with the secrets of his son, and they ought to have informed him by saying, ‘My lord, Gaston wears constantly on his breast a bag of such and such a form.’ This they did not do and suffered a terrible death for it; which was a pity, for there were not in all Gascony such handsome or well-appointed squires.”
When this search had proved useless he fell back upon his son; he sent for the nobles, the prelates and all the principal persons of his country, related the affair to them, and told them that it was his intention to put the youth to death. But they would not agree to this, and said that the country had need of an heir for its better preservation and defence; “and would not quit Orthez until the count had assured them that Gaston should not be put to death, so great was their affection for him.” Still the youth remained in the tower of Orthez, “where was little light,” always lying alone, unwilling to eat, “cursing the hour that ever he was born or begotten, that he should come to such an end.” On the tenth day the jailer saw all the meats that had been served in a corner, and went and told it to the count. The count was again enraged, like a beast of prey who encounters a remnant of resistance after it has once been satiated; “without saying a word,” he came to the prison, holding by the point a small knife with which he was cleaning his nails. Then striking his fist upon his son’s throat, he pushed him rudely as he said: “Ha, traitor, why dost thou not eat?” and went away without saying more. His knife had touched an artery; the youth frightened and wan, turned without a word to the other side of the bed, shed his blood and died.
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The count was grieved beyond measure when he heard this, for those violent natures felt only with excess and by contrasts; he had himself shaven and clothed in black. “The body of the youth was borne, with tears and lamentations, to the church of the Augustine Friars at Orthez, where it was buried.” * But such murders left an ill-healed wound in the heart; the dull pain remained, and from time to time some dark shadow crossed the tumult of the banquets. This is why the count never again felt such perfect joy as before.
* The passages from Froissart are from the version of Thomas
Johnes. New York: J. Winchester, New World Press.
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It was a sad time; there is hardly another in which one would have lived so unwillingly. Poetry was imbecile, chivalry was falling into brigandage, religion suffered degradation, the State, disjointed, was crumbling away; the nation, ground down by king, by nobles and by Englishmen, struggled for a hundred years in a slough, between the dying middle-age and the modern era which was not yet opened. And yet a man like Ernauton must have experienced a unique and splendid joy when, planted like a Hercules upon his two feet, feeling his shirt of mail upon his breast, he pierced through a hedge of pikes, and wielded his great sword in the sunlight.
