“Jongleur,” said Garin, “some miles from this spot there is a feast day in a fair town. This is the strangest thing that ever I saw, that a jongleur should be here and not there!”
“Esquire,” said the other, “I have certain information that the prince holds to-day a great tourney, and that every knight and baron in forty miles around has gone to the joust. I know not an odder thing than that all the knights should be riding in one direction and all the esquires in another!”
“Two odd things in one day is good measure,” said Garin. “That is a fine lute you have.”
The thin dark person drew the musical instrument in front of him and began to play, and then to sing in a fair-to-middling voice.
“In the spring all hidden close,
Lives many a bud will be a rose.
In the spring ’tis crescent morn,
But then, ah then, the man is born!
In the spring ’tis yea or nay;
Then cometh Love makes gold of clay!
Love is the rose and truest gold,
Love is the day and soldan bold,
Love—”
The jongleur yawned and ceased to sing. “Why,” he asked the air, “why should I sing Guy of Perpignan’s doggerel and give it immortality when Guy of Perpignan, turning on his heel, hath turned me off?”
He drew the ribbon over his head, laid the lute on the grass, and leaning back, closed his eyes. Garin gazed at the lute for a moment then, dismounting, picked it up and tried his hand. He sang a hunting stave, in a better voice by far than was the jongleur’s. None had ever told him that he had a nightingale in his throat.
The jongleur opened his eyes. “Good squire, I could teach you to sing not so badly! But sing of love—sing of love! Hunting is, poetically speaking, out of court favour.”
“I sing of that which I know of,” said Garin.
The other sat up. “Have I found the phœnix? Nay, nay, I trow not! Love is the theme, and I have not found a man—no, not in cloister—who could not rhyme and carol and expound it! Love is extremely in fashion.—Have you a lord?”