Ni ma beltatz ni mos pretz ni mos sens,
C'atressi'm sui enganad' e trahïa
Com degr'esser, s'ieu fos desavinens."
This was translated into French prose as follows:—
"Le sujet de mes chants sera pènible et douleureux. Hélas! J'ai à me plaindre de celui dont je suis la tendre amie; je l'aime plus que chose qui soit au monde; mais auprès de lui, rien ne me sert, ni merci, ni courtoisie, ni ma beauté, ni mon mérite, ni mon esprit. Je suis trompée, je suis trahie, comme si j'avais commis quelque faute envers lui."
The Countess goes on in the same strain at some length. Raimbaut, it appears, was very popular with the ladies of his brilliant world, but the poetess reminds him that he ought to know who "best loves him and is true withal." But no appeal moves him—to Barbara's great annoyance.
The account of this gentleman's hardness of heart called forth many exclamations, as I read verse after plaintive verse. How any lady could have set so much store on so coarse-grained and worthless a person as the Count of Orange was difficult to understand; but as Barbara conclusively pointed out, she had fallen in love with him for some unfathomable reason best known to the Laughing Gods. But it was very annoying, all that waste of emotion and suffering. We found ourselves almost as much troubled over it as if it had happened to some friend whose infatuation one had tried in vain to cure with arguments and pure reason.
It was a strange, emotional world that we were wandering in, and as the books with which we were trying to find a clue to the puzzle took opposite views of the manners and ideals of the age, it was not a little baffling. To find our way was like trying to get out of a labyrinth. Often an author would insist that these ardent canzos were merely conventional exercises in the style of the day and meant nothing personal. But the theory would not stand investigation. Hueffer, in his book on the troubadours, says of these singers:
"Frequently they may, and in some cases we positively know they did, mistake gracious condescension for responsive love—it was the privilege of high-born and high-minded women to protect and favour poetry, and to receive in return the troubadour's homage."