The only means of evading this decree was for the lady to declare that henceforth she intended to abandon love altogether, but if she did that she was obliged to make up her mind to endure social ostracism, for then "she was sure to be shunned by the gay ladies and gentlemen who then formed the vast majority of the fashionable world." We are not told what the lady decided to do in this most trying dilemma.
Altogether the state of society under the sway of the Courts of Love—or of the sentiment they represent—seems like that of some strange fairy-tale. Nothing could have been more fantastic or romantic; but however ridiculous they may seem to the critical mind, there was always a strain that one can only call noble running through it all. It might be dangerous, impracticable, subversive, "immoral," if one will, but it was never paltry or base.
In their own fashion the reputed Courts of Love upheld a very high ideal. They insisted upon the absolute sacredness of a promise and of the word of honour, which a knight or a lady must keep to the death. They demanded fidelity between lovers, for that was considered "to be the essence of high-toned gallantry."
All this is our own inheritance of to-day. As regards the etiquette of love-making the Court instituted what were called the four degrees of love: "hesitating," "praying," "listening," and "drurerie." "When the lady consented to enter this last stage, she granted the gentleman his first kiss ... after which there could be no withdrawal from the engagement."
The lady was often unwilling to give it, and there are many stories of troubadours who try to obtain it by fraud or artifice. It seems strange that, in that case, in a society with a high sense of honour, it should have possessed any binding value, but apparently it had something of the quality of the marriage ceremony, and therefore, perhaps, something of the idea of a tie which might be enforced against the will of the person concerned.
It is difficult, perhaps impossible, for the modern eye to see this era exactly as it was. Writers represent it as corrupt and unlovely or as romantic and noble according to their own particular bias. The former attitude is perhaps largely determined by a leaning towards the older order of thought which the advent of chivalry challenged; while the less severe view is apt to accompany sympathy with the newer doctrine, which establishes the woman as an independent being, for good or for evil, and refuses to regard her as the property in any sense whatever—whether by gift or by "contract"—of another person. As this latter ideal is in its infancy even yet, the majority of writers see little in the troubadour epoch but hopeless licence. It is to them merely an outbreak of "immortality," and neither the passionate rebellion against an old and degrading system nor the enthusiastic reaching out towards something better saves it from their severe condemnation. But we have all of us good reason to be thankful for this stage of social upheaval through which our spiritual ancestors passed, and it ill becomes us to cast reproaches at those who have brought us, in one great burst of inspiration, so much farther on our way.
CHAPTER X
ARLES
"The name of Arles has raised great discussions.... Some see in it a Greek origin, Agns, others regard it as Latin, Ara lata (raised altar), because the Romans there found an altar consecrated to Diana of the Ephesians by the Phoceans of Marseilles: ... others as Celtic Ar-lath, moist place, on account of its marshes.... It is sufficiently evident that the name Arelate has not a physiognomy either Greek or Roman; and the radical Ar which is found ... in the name of the Arekomique Volcians ... the Arnnematici, the Arandunici ... permits one to affirm that this city was contemporary with those ancient peoples, and existed in the fifth century before our era.... Placed between its river and its inland sea, Arles had in fact two ports as she had two cities: on the left bank of the Rhone was the Patrician town, with its temples, its amphitheatre, its theatre, its forum, the baths, triumphal arches, statues.... On the right bank ... was the city of business men, sailors, and the people. Larger in those days than the Patrician city, Trinquetailles is nothing to-day but the maritime suburb of the modern town. A bridge of boats connected the two towns, and Constantine substituted for it a bridge of masonry of which one can still see the remains on the quays of the Rhone."
Translation from Charles Lenthéric.