That you were touched nor word nor token proved!
But think not that you're free although unmov'd:
From you I cannot, will not severed be!"
But Alazais replied never a word. His influence over her seemed to have been entirely lost. Pons then "employed three ladies to plead his cause," and they entered so warmly into the undertaking that finally they succeeded. So Pons made another song, very joyous this time, swearing that "henceforth he will keep strictly to the path of love, without deviating a hair's-breadth."
But in the midst of this new-found happiness Alazais falls ill and dies.
Barbara was much aggrieved. I scarcely liked to read her the end: how Pons wrote a piercing lament, saying he would close his heart and rend his strings, and
"Die tuneless and alone,"
a resolve which he actually carried out. He became a member of one of the military brotherhoods of the day, and died fighting in the Third Crusade.
This story, however, sad as it is, is among the most attractive of the troubadour romances, because the characters of Pons and Alazais were, on the whole, a near approach to the chivalric standard for men and women.
"When Pons" (to quote Justin Smith once more) "rode out of the lists, bearing his lady's glove in triumph, he felt a joy quite fresh in the experience of mankind."