"When I behold the skylark winging its merry journey towards the sun and then forgetful of itself from sudden inebriety of pleasure, drop down precipitant; Oh! how I long then for a fate like hers! How much I enjoy then the joy to which I'm witness! I am astonished that my heart is not at once dissolved in longing."
From M. Fauriel's "History of Provençal Poetry"
(Poem of the Skylark).
CHAPTER VI
THE BIRTH OF CHIVALRY
It is impossible to wander a day in Provence without being drawn to wonder if not to speculate upon the origin of that extraordinary outbreak of new sentiment that we call chivalry. It seems like a miraculous birth. It is impossible even to imagine what would have been the destinies of mankind had the beautiful inspiration failed to descend out of the blue just at the most brutal epoch of European history.
The life of the early Middle Ages was barbaric beyond all our powers of conception. Might was right in those days in a sense perhaps more absolute than under conditions of primitive savagery.
In fact, there existed a sort of official savagery of Church and State. Tolerance was undreamt of; there was no refuge for the oppressed, no rights for the weak, no honour, no fair play. Such rights and qualities belong to the ideals of chivalry. They had no nook or corner in the preceding era, no niche in the Christian Church; and the heart in which such outlandish feelings were untimely born must either have hardened or broken—as surely many a heart did break for sheer loneliness, divided by centuries from its brother spirits.
An extravagant picture? Only in the sense in which all rough sketches are extravagant.