"Geoffry Rudel, of Blaye, was a very great lord, prince of Blaye, and he fell in love, without knowing her, with the Princess of Tripoli, for the great goodness and great graciousness, which he heard tell of her from the pilgrims, who came from Antioch. And he made for her many fair songs, with good melodies and suppliant words, and, for the desire he had to see her, he took the cross and set out upon the sea to go to her. And it happened that in the ship a grievous malady took him, in such wise that those that were with him believed him to be dead, but they contrived to bring him to Tripoli into a hostelry, like one dead. They sent word to the countess and she came to his bed and took him in her arms. Then he knew that she was the countess and he recovered his sight and his hearing and he praised God, giving Him thanks that He had sustained his life until he had seen her. And thus he died in the arms of the countess, and she gave him noble burial in the house of the Temple at Tripoli. And then the same day she took the veil for the sorrow she had for him and for his death."[1]
[1] Translated from a Provençal MS. of the thirteenth century.
CLXIV
Here is a singular proof of the madness called crystallisation, to be found in Mistress Hutchinson's Memoirs:
"He told to M. Hutchinson a very true story of a gentleman who not long before had come for some time to lodge in Richmond, and found all the people he came in company with bewailing the death of a gentlewoman that had lived there. Hearing her so much deplored, he made enquiry after her, and grew so in love with the description, that no other discourse could at first please him nor could he at last endure any other; he grew desperately melancholy and would go to a mount where the print of her foot was cut and lie there pining and kissing it all the day long, till at length death in some months' space concluded his languishment. This story was very true." (Vol. I, p. 83.)
CLXV
Lisio Visconti was anything but a great reader. Not to mention what he may have seen while knocking about the world, his essay is based on the Memoirs of some fifteen or twenty persons of note. In case it happens that the reader thinks such trifling points worthy of a moment's attention, I give the books from which Lisio drew his reflexions and conclusions:—
- The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini.
- The novels of Cervantes and Scarron.
- Manon Lescaut and Le Doyen de Killerine, by the Abbé Prévôt.
- The Latin Letters of Héloïse to Abelard.
- Tom Jones.
- Letters of a Portuguese Nun.
- Two or three stories by Auguste La Fontaine.
- Pignotti's History of Tuscany.
- Werther.
- Brantôme.
- Memoirs of Carlo Gozzi (Venice, 1760)—only the eighty pages on the history of his love affairs.
- The Memoirs of Lauzun, Saint-Simon, d'Épinay, de Staël, Marmontel, Bezenval, Roland, Duclos, Horace Walpole, Evelyn, Hutchinson.
- Letters of Mademoiselle Lespinasse.