He has no profit from the earth:
If he is clerk, he forgets his learning:
If anything else, whatever his worth,
Great is his labour and little his earning.
Long and unmeasured and deep the pain:
Short is the joy; the fruition vain.'
But the pleading of Reason, as generally happens in such cases, is quite useless. The lover
'For still within my heart there glows
The breath divine of that sweet Rose,'
goes next to a Friend (Ami), from whom he gets small sympathy, but much practical relief. Acting on his counsel, he begs pardon of Danger, who grants it sulkily. Danger in most mediæval allegories stands for the husband, but there is nothing to show that Guillaume de Lorris meant him to be understood in this sense, and we may without any violence take him to represent the natural guardian of the damsel. Getting Bel Accueil to accompany him, he goes once more to see his Rosebud, which he finds greatly improved. Venus obtains for him the privilege of a kiss. Shame, Jealousy, and Malebouche, are alarmed, and interfere. Danger turns everybody out. Jealousy builds a high tower, in which Bel Accueil is shut up, a prisoner, with Danger and Malebouche to guard him. Outside the tower sits the disconsolate lover, lamenting his misfortunes, and the mutability of love's favours, which he compares to those of Fortune, of whom he says: