In another case Ermengarde of Narbonne decided that the addition of the marriage tie cannot invalidate a prior affair, nisi—unless the lady has in mind to have done with love forever.
Decretals of this nature, however absurd they may seem, were at least serviceable in the reforms they effected. According to the civil law if a husband absented himself for ten years, the wife had the right to remarry. According to the law of love, the absence of a lover, however prolonged, did not release the lady from her attachment. The civil law authorized a widow to remarry in a year and a day. The law of love exacted for the heart a widowhood of twice that period. The civil law permitted a husband to beat his wife reasonably. The law of love enforced for the lady respect.[46]
The resulting conditions, perhaps analogous to those of eighteenth-century Italy where every woman of position had, in addition to a husband a cavaliere servente, succeeded none the less in developing outside of marriage and directly in opposition to it, the ideal of what marriage is, the union not only of hands but of hearts. The Courts of Love might go, their work endured. They made woman what she had been in republican Rome and what she is to-day, the guide and associate of man.
Slowly thereafter they followed knight-errantry to its grave without however meanwhile becoming what Hallam described as “fantastical solemnities.” “I never had,” Hallam declared, “the patience to look at the older writers who discussed this tiresome subject.” In view of which his opinions are not important, particularly as the Courts of Love so far from becoming fantastic went to the other extreme. Instead of questions beautiful and subtle, there arose others, highly realistic, together with investigations de visu which young gentlewomen treated in terms precise.
Before decadence set in, at a time when these establishments were at their best and notwithstanding the ethical purport of their decisions, misadventures occurred. Of these, one, commonly reported by all authorities, is curious.
The Lord Raymond of Castel-Roussillon had for wife the Lady Marguerite. Guillaume de Cabstain, a lad of quality came to their court where he was made page to the countess and where, after certain episodes, he composed for her the lai which runs:
“Sweet are the thoughts
That love awakes in me.”
Etc. When Raymond heard the song he led Guillaume far from the castle, cut his head off, put it in a basket, cut his heart out, put it also in a basket, returned to the castle, had the heart roasted and had it served at table to his wife. The Lady Marguerite ate without knowing what it was. The repast concluded, Raymond stood up. He told his wife that what she had eaten was the heart of the page. He fetched and showed her the head and asked how the heart had tasted.
The Lady Marguerite, recognizing the head, replied that the heart had been so appetizing that never other food or drink should take from her its savor. Raymond ran at her with his sword. She fled away, threw herself from a balcony and broke her skull.
The story, though commonly reported, has not been substantiated. It occurred a long time ago and, it may be, never occurred at all. But as a picture of mediæval love, life and death, it is exact. If it did not occur, it might have. Joy’s fingers are ever at its lips bidding farewell. It was in that attitude that its parliaments departed.