His friends, returning from the fight,
On the way there met the knight,
For the jousts were wholly run,
And all the prizes had been won
By the knight who had not stirred
From the masses he had heard.
All the knights, as they came by,
Saluted him and gave him joy,
And frankly said that never yet
Had any knight performed such feat,
Nor ever honour won so great
As he had done in arms that day;
While many of them stopped to say
That they all his prisoners were:
"In truth, your prisoners we are:
We cannot but admit it true:
Taken we were in arms by you!"
Then the truth dawned on him there,
And all at once he saw the light,
That She, by whom he stood in prayer,
—The Virgin,—stood by him in fight!
The moral of the tale belongs to the best feudal times. The knight at once recognized that he had become the liege-man of the Queen, and henceforth must render his service entirely to her. So he called his "barons," or tenants, together, and after telling them what had happened, took leave of them and the "siecle":—
"Moult est ciest tournoiement beaux
Ou ele a pour moi tournoie;
Mes trop l'avroit mal emploie
Se pour lui je ne tournoioie!
Fox seroie se retournoie
A la mondaine vanite.
A dieu promet en verite
Que james ne tournoierai
Fors devant le juge verai
Qui conoit le bon chevalier
Et selonc le fet set jutgier."
Lors prent congie piteusement,
Et maint en plorent tenrement.
D'euls se part, en une abaie
Servi puis la vierge Marie.
"Glorious has the tourney been
Where for me has fought the Queen;
But a disgrace for me it were
If I tourneyed not for her.
Traitor to her should I be,
Returned to worldly vanity.
I promise truly, by God's grace,
Never again the lists to see,
Except before that Judge's face,
Who knows the true knight from the base,
And gives to each his final place."
Then piteously he takes his leave
While in tears his barons grieve.
So he parts, and in an abbey
Serves henceforth the Virgin Mary.
Observe that in this case Mary exacted no service! Usually the legends are told, as in this instance, by priests, though they were told in the same spirit by laymen, as you can see in the poems of Rutebeuf, and they would not have been told very differently by soldiers, if one may judge from Joinville; but commonly the Virgin herself prescribed the kind of service she wished. Especially to the young knight who had, of his own accord, chosen her for his liege, she showed herself as exacting as other great ladies showed themselves toward their Lancelots and Tristans. When she chose, she could even indulge in more or less coquetry, else she could never have appealed to the sympathies of the thirteenth-century knight- errant. One of her miracles told how she disciplined the young men who were too much in the habit of assuming her service in order to obtain selfish objects. A youthful chevalier, much given to tournaments and the other worldly diversions of the siecle, fell in love, after the rigorous obligation of his class, as you know from your Dulcinea del Toboso, with a lady who, as was also prescribed by the rules of courteous love, declined to listen to him. An abbot of his acquaintance, sympathizing with his distress, suggested to him the happy idea of appealing for help to the Queen of Heaven. He followed the advice, and for an entire year shut himself up, and prayed to Mary, in her chapel, that she would soften the heart of his beloved, and bring her to listen to his prayer. At the end of the twelvemonth, fixed as a natural and sufficient proof of his earnestness in devotion, he felt himself entitled to indulge again in innocent worldly pleasures, and on the first morning after his release, he started out on horseback for a day's hunting. Probably thousands of young knights and squires were always doing more or less the same thing, and it was quite usual that, as they rode through the fields or forests, they should happen on a solitary chapel or shrine, as this knight did. He stopped long enough to kneel in it and renew his prayer to the Queen:—
La mere dieu qui maint chetif
A retrait de chetivete
Par sa grant debonnairte
Par sa courtoise courtoisie
Au las qui tant l'apele et prie
Ignelement s'est demonstree,
D'une coronne corronnee
Plaine de pierres precieuses
Si flamboianz si precieuses
Pour pou li euil ne li esluisent.
Si netement ainsi reluisent
Et resplendissent com la raie
Qui en este au matin raie.
Tant par a bel et cler le vis
Que buer fu mez, ce li est vis,
Qui s'i puest assez mirer.
"Cele qui te fait soupirer
Et en si grant erreur t'a mis,"
Fait nostre dame, "biau douz amis,
Est ele plus bele que moi?"
Li chevaliers a tel effroi
De la clarte, ne sai que face;
Ses mains giete devant sa face;
Tel hide a et tel freeur
Chaoir se laisse de freeur;
Mais cele en qui pitie est toute
Li dist: "Amis, or n'aies doute!
Je suis cele, n'en doute mie,
Qui te doi faire avoir t'amie.
Or prens garde que tu feras.
Cele que tu miex ameras
De nous ii auras a amie."
God's Mother who to many a wretch
Has brought relief from wretchedness.
By her infinite goodness,
By her courteous courteousness,
To her suppliant in distress
Came from heaven quickly down;
On her head she bore the crown,
Full of precious stones and gems
Darting splendour, flashing flames,
Till the eye near lost its sight
In the keenness of the light,
As the summer morning's sun
Blinds the eyes it shines upon.
So beautiful and bright her face,
Only to look on her is grace.
"She who has caused you thus to sigh,
And has brought you to this end,"—
Said Our Lady,—"Tell me, friend,
Is she handsomer than I?"
Scared by her brilliancy, the knight
Knows not what to do for fright;
He clasps his hands before his face,
And in his shame and his disgrace
Falls prostrate on the ground with fear;
But she with pity ever near
Tells him:—"Friend, be not afraid!
Doubt not that I am she whose aid
Shall surely bring your love to you;
But take good care what you shall do!
She you shall love most faithfully
Of us two, shall your mistress be."
One is at a loss to imagine what a young gentleman could do, in such a situation, except to obey, with the fewest words possible, the suggestion so gracefully intended. Queen's favours might be fatal gifts, but they were much more fatal to reject than to accept. Whatever might be the preferences of the knight, he had invited his own fate, and in consequence was fortunate to be allowed the option of dying and going to heaven, or dying without going to heaven. Mary was not always so gentle with young men who deserted or neglected her for an earthly rival;—the offence which irritated her most, and occasionally caused her to use language which hardly bears translation into modern English. Without meaning to assert that the Queen of Heaven was jealous as Queen Blanche herself, one must still admit that she was very severe on lovers who showed willingness to leave her service, and take service with any other lady. One of her admirers, educated for the priesthood but not yet in full orders, was obliged by reasons of family interest to quit his career in order to marry. An insult like this was more than Mary could endure, and she gave the young man a lesson he never forgot:—
Ireement li prent a dire
La mere au roi de paradis:
"Di moi, di moi, tu que jadis
M'amoies tant de tout ton coeur.
Pourquoi m'as tu jete puer?
Di moi, di moi, ou est donc cele
Qui plus de moi bone est et bele?…
Pourquoi, pourquoi, las durfeus,
Las engignez, las deceuz,
Me lais pour une lasse fame,
Qui suis du del Royne et Dame?
Enne fais tu trop mauvais change
Qui tu por une fame estrange
Me laisses qui par amors t'amoie
Et ja ou ciel t'apareilloie
En mes chambres un riche lit
Por couchier t'ame a grand delit?
Trop par as faites grant merveilles
S'autrement tost ne te conseilles
Ou ciel serra tes lits deffais
Et en la flamme d'enfer faiz!"