André has preserved for us the petition, which was addressed to the Countess of Champagne, when she decided the following question in the negative: "Can real love exist between husband and wife?"
But what was the penalty that was incurred by disobedience to the decrees of the Courts of Love?
We find the Court of Gascony ordering that such or such of its judgments should be observed as a perpetual institution, and that those ladies who did not obey should incur the enmity of every honourable lady.
Up to what point did public opinion sanction the decrees of the Courts of Love?
Was there as much disgrace in drawing back from them, as there would be to-day in an affair dictated by honour?
I can find nothing in André or Nostradamus that puts me in a position to solve this question.
Two troubadours, Simon Boria and Lanfranc Cigalla, disputed the question: "Who is worthier of being loved, he who gives liberally, or he who gives in spite of himself in order to pass for liberal?"
This question was submitted to the ladies of the Court of Pierrefeu and Signe; but the two troubadours, being discontented with the verdict, had recourse to the supreme Court of Love of the ladies of Romanin.[3]
The form of the verdicts is conformable to that of the judicial tribunals of this period.
Whatever may be the reader's opinion as to the degree of importance which the Courts of Love occupied in the attention of their contemporaries, I beg him to consider what to-day, in 1822, are the subjects of conversation among the most considerable and richest ladies of Toulon and Marseilles.