To many tears succeeds a mutual affection, so true, so strong, accompanied by so much happiness, that both forget the fatal date. However, start he must. "Go," says the maiden, "and offer him double, or treble the sum; offer him all the gold he wishes; I will procure it for thee." He arrives, he offers, but the merchant refuses: "Thou speakest in vain! Wert thou to offer me all the wealth of the city, nothing would I accept but what has been signed, sealed, and settled between us." They go before the judge; the sentence is not a doubtful one.
The maiden, however, kept herself well informed of all that went on, and, seeing the turn affairs were taking, "she cut her hair, donned a rich suit of men's clothes, mounted a palfrey, and set out for the palace where her lover was about to hear his sentence." She asks to be allowed to defend the knight. "But nothing can be done," says the judge. She offers money to the merchant, which he refuses; she then exclaims: "Let it be done as he desires; let him have the flesh, and nothing but the flesh; the bond says nothing of the blood." Hearing this, the merchant replies: "Give me my money and I hold you clear of the rest." "Not so," said the maiden. The merchant is confounded, the knight released; the maiden returns home hurriedly, puts on her female attire, and hastens out to meet her lover, eager to hear all that has passed.
"O my dear mistress, that I love above all things, I nearly lost my life this day; but as I was about to be condemned, suddenly appeared a knight of an admirable presence, so handsome that I never saw his like." How could she, at these words, prevent her sparkling eyes from betraying her? "He saved me by his wisdom, and nought had I even to pay.
"The Maiden.—Thou might'st have been more generous, and brought home to supper the knight who had saved thy life.
"The Knight.—He appeared and disappeared so suddenly I could not.
"The Maiden.—Would'st thou recognise him again if he returned?
"The Knight.—I should, assuredly."[277]
She then puts on again her male attire, and it is easy to imagine with what transports the knight beheld his saviour in his friend. The end of this first outline of a "Merchant of Venice" is not less naïve, picturesque, and desultory than the rest: "Thereupon he immediately married the maiden," and they led saintly lives. We are not told what the prudent emperor Celestinus thought of this "immediately."
Next to these compilers whose works became celebrated, but whose names for the most part remained concealed, were professional authors, who were and wanted to be known, and who enjoyed a great personal fame. Foremost among them were John of Salisbury and Walter Map.
John of Salisbury,[278] a former pupil of Abélard, a friend of St. Bernard, Thomas Becket, and the English Pope Adrian IV., the envoy of Henry II. to the court of Rome, which he visited ten times in twelve years, writes in Latin his "Policratic,"[279] or "De nugis Curialium," his "Metalogic," his "Enthetic" (in verse), and his eulogy on Becket.[280] John is only too well versed in the classics, and he quotes them to an extent that does more credit to his erudition than to his taste; but he has the gift of observation, and his remarks on the follies of his time have a great historical value. In his "Policratic" is found a satire on a sort of personage who was then beginning to play his part again, after an interruption of several centuries, namely, the curialis, or courtier; a criticism on histrions who, with their indecent farces, made a rough prelude to modern dramatic art; a caricature of those fashionable singers who disgraced the religious ceremonies in the newly erected cathedrals by their songs resembling those "of women ... of sirens ... of nightingales and parrots."[281] He ridicules hunting-monks, and also those chiromancers for whom Becket himself had a weakness. "Above all," says John, by way of conclusion and apology, "let not the men of the Court upbraid me with the follies I trust them with; let them know I did not mean them in the least, I satirised only myself and those like me, and it would be hard indeed if I were forbidden to castigate both myself and my peers."[282] In his "Metalogic," he scoffs at the vain dialectics of silly logicians, Cornificians, as he calls them, an appellation that stuck to them all through the Middle Ages, and at their long phrases interlarded with so many negative particles that, in order to find out whether yes or no was meant, it became necessary to examine if the number of noes was an odd or even one.