For her, continuance of life is only "a game that must be lost." But for the nameless German girl there is no pathos in living, beyond the thought of her master's death, and her sentiment was as childlike as when it began, while she was only eight years old. Her love is a flame that burns impatiently away from the taper that feeds it; for her generous passion is after all a beautiful devoted wilfulness. When her parents wept to lose her, and her lord wept at his own weak hesitation, she wept above them all and her tears won the day. She rode with Henry to Salerno, and was unhappy only because the journey was so long. The great physician took her hand, and led her alone into a barred and bolted room. Then he tried to frighten her and induce her to retract her consent, but she only laughed until she became afraid that he would not do his part, whereupon she broke out into an indignant scorn for his unmanly weakness. When he bade her undress, she did so without a blush; he bound her to his table, and took up his knife. He wished to render death easy (so he told himself), and taking a whetstone to make the knife sharper, he slowly whetted it—only as a pretext for delaying. The gentleman outside found himself restless. He listened, then he tried to look in and at last through a crevice in the wall he saw that "little bride" who had been his main companion and comfort during those three wretched years. By a fine touch of nature, the poet makes the sight of her perfect loveliness as she lay waiting for her celestial bridal, the force that broke the selfish charm which had enchained his manliness. He beat on the door, he called, and when no response came, he burst his way in. "The child is too lovely to die. For myself, God's will be done."
It was now that her trial came, as she wailed and beat wildly at her body, to force on him the life he was unwilling to take. She talked bitterly and peevishly, as if she had been cheated of heaven through his cruelty. But it was in vain, he dressed her again in the rich garments which he had procured for the sacrificial journey, and they set out on their return to their distant home, the sobbing girl and the leper. But as they rode along, the divine might that seemed so near to mediæval faith was their companion, and touching the incurable disease, fulfilled love's miracle. Henry took their daughter back to the peasants, and gave her rich gifts, while he presented them with the land which they had farmed, and all its serfs and chattels. Then he went back to his estates, and to the welcome that the world was waiting to give him. By and by, when his people insisted that he should marry, he called an old-time conference about whom he should choose. There were numerous suggestions, but the advisers did not agree. He listened, and then telling them that unless they would approve his own choice, he should never marry, he stepped to the side of "the dear little wife" who had loved him as a leper.
The romance of Fleur et Blanchefleur, which goes back, though not in its present form, to the twelfth century, enjoyed such popularity that it was translated into almost every European tongue. Indeed, in some languages it is found in more than one version. The story tells of a Saracen prince, whose royal father interrupts the smooth course of his true love for a Christian girl. She was the daughter of a captive lady in the palace of the Queen, and the royal boy and the bond girl had been born on the same day. From his birth, the mother of Blanchefleur became Fleur's nurse; the pagan law required that he must be suckled by a heathen, but in all other ways the infants were treated like twins. They slept in one cradle, and when they could eat and drink they were given the same food. Thus they grew up together, until they were five years old, when the King, seeing his child as fine and promising a boy as could be found in any land, decided that it was time for him to begin his education. He selected a master, but Fleur, when he was bidden to study, burst into tears and cried, "Sire, what will Blanchefleur do? Who will teach her? I never can learn without her." The King answered that since he loved her so, Blanchefleur should go with him to school.
"So they went and came together, and the joy of their love was still uninterrupted. It was a wonder to see how each of the two studied for each; neither learned anything without straightway telling the other. At nature's earliest, all their concern was love; they were quick in learning and well they remembered. Pagan books that spake of love they read together with delight; these hastened them along in the understanding and joy of love. On their way home from school, they would put their arms about each other, and kiss. In the King's garden, bright with all plants and flowers of various hues, they went to play every morning, and to eat their dinner; and after they had eaten, they listened to the birds singing in the trees above them, and then they went their way back to school, and a happy walk they found it. When they were again at school they took their ivory tablets, and you might have seen them writing letters and verses of love, in the wax. Deftly with their gold and silver styles they made letters and greeting of love, of the songs of birds and of flowers. This was all they cared for. In five years and fifteen days, they both had learned to write neatly on parchment, and to talk in Latin so well that no one could understand."
When we follow the poem along, we find in the different versions many familiar romance expedients, conventional incidents of the pathetic, exciting, and marvellous, but the charm is in the unwavering love of these twins, who from the hour of birth breathed together, even in their sleep, yet no kin to each other, and blending brotherhood and sisterhood with the other love of man and woman in perfection, since for neither they knew the beginning. In this way the mediæval romance is even more ideal than Beaumont's Triumph of Love, where Gerard and Violante passed from the sentiment of childhood "as innocently as the first lovers ere they fell."
"Gerard's and my affection began," the heroine tells Ferdinand,
"In infancy: my uncle brought him oft
In long clothes hither; you were such another.
The little boy would kiss me, being a child,
And say he loved me: give me all his toys,
Bracelets, rings, sweetmeats, all his rosy smiles;
I then would stand and stare upon his eyes,
Play with his locks, and swear I loved him too.
For sure, methought he was a little Love,
He wooed so prettily in innocence
That then he warmed my fancy; for I felt
A glimmering beam of love kindle my blood
Both which time since hath made a flame and flood."
In the early stages of Fleur's love-trials his parents attempted to persuade him that Blanchefleur was dead, and to give confirmation to their assertions they caused a superb tomb to be constructed, in a style that is of considerable interest in the study of literary origins from its obviously Oriental tone. Without delaying for its rich and curious Eastern details, we may yet notice the sentiment in the figures of the boy and girl that were placed upon it. "Never were seen images of fairer children, or more like to the lovers. The image of Blanchefleur holds a flower before Fleur, before her lover holds the fair one a rose of fine bright gold; and before her, Fleur holds a blanched golden fleur-de-lis. Close by each other they sit, a sweet look on their faces." A mechanical device is so contrived that when the wind blew and touched the children they embraced and kissed, and by necromancy they spoke to each other as in their childhood, and thus said Fleur to Blanchefleur: "Kiss me, sweet," and kissing him, she replied: "I love you more than all the world."
The story of Fleur and Blanchefleur was so popular that they became identified with the characters of another romance, and were sung of as the parents of Berte-as-graus-pies, the heroine of an attractive legend, and the mythical mother of Charlemagne. In the poem that relates her misfortunes after she has been sent from Hungary to France as the wife of Pepin, we find a suggestion of the depth of sentiment that was always associated with her legendary parents. She has been in France almost nine years without their having heard from her, and Blanchefleur determines to undertake a journey to see her child again before she dies. The King, without opposing her desire, expresses a half remonstrance that we may add to the other proofs in mediæval poetry, that true love in our modern sense was familiar throughout those eras: "Oh, my lady, how shall we be able to live so long without each other?" Let us believe that in the Utopia where these lovers who loved from their birth resided, they found, after their own sharp trials and the trials of their daughter were safely over, a serene old age, out of which they passed unconsciously some night, sleeping themselves away in each other's arms.
This love between boy and girl was attractive to the old narrative poets. The greatest of them all touched the soul of young romance when he said of Sigune and Schionatulander, "Alas, they are still too young for such pain, yet 'tis the love of youth which lasts." Wolfram gives us pretty touches of childhood as far back as the nursery; like that of a mother and her ladies playing over the new-born baby, or of children learning to stand by taking hold of chairs, and creeping over the floor to reach them, or of Sigune's care to take her box of dolls with her when she went away. "Whoever saw this little girl thought her a glimpse of May among the dewy flowers." As she grew older, too, he describes her, assuming the airs of a young lady. "When her breasts were rounding and her light wavy hair began to turn dark, she grew more proud and dignified, though always keeping her womanlike sweetness." The story of her love with Schionatulander has delightful stanzas; their long love-pleading dialogue is much truer than most of the minnesingers' work in its restraint and in the girl's coy sweetness. She is an earlier Dorigen as she watches for the beloved who does not come, wasting many an evening at the window gazing over the fields, or climbing to the housetop to look. But what distinguishes the author of the Titurel above his fellow-poets is his sentiment for something more than romance. Children are dear to him, and the wife is dearer. His idea of love consists no more in Dante's platonic mysticism than in passion and inconstancy. Without transcendentalism its dominant tone is spiritual. Compare an earlier lover's cry in the loveliest of French romances: "What is there in heaven for me? I will never go there without Nicolette, my sweet darling, whom I love so much. It is to hell that fine gentlemen go and pretty, well-bred ladies who love." Compare that Parisian type of feeling with this of Wolfram: "Love between man and woman has its house on earth, and its pure guidance leads us to God and heaven. This love is everywhere save in hell!" To such a poet we naturally turn for the deepest mediæval note in the treatment of childhood, and we do not listen in vain.