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In the first conception of the institution of chivalry it was doubtless a device of great purity, and contemplated none but highly proper and becoming purposes. Those very features which, in our more sophisticated era, seem to have been the most absurd, or at least fantastic, were, perhaps among its best securities. The sentiment of love, apart from its passion, is what a very earnest people, in a very selfish period, cannot so well understand; but it was this very separation of interests, which we now hold to be inseparable, that constituted the peculiarity of chivalry—the fanciful in its characteristics rendering sentiment independent of passion, and refining the crude desire by the exercise and influence of tastes, which do not usually accompany it. Among the Provençal knights and troubadours, in the palmy days of their progress, love was really the most innocent and the most elevated of sentiments. It seems to have been nursed without guile, and was professed, even when seemingly in conflict with the rights of others, without the slightest notion of wrong doing or offence. It did not vex the temper, or impair the marital securities of the husband, that the beauties of his dame were sung with enthusiasm by the youthful poet; on the contrary, he who gloried in the possession of a jewel, was scarcely satisfied with fortune unless she brought to a just knowledge of its splendors, the bard who alone could convey to the world a similar sense of the value of his treasure. The narrative which we have gathered from the ancient chronicles of Provence, and which we take occasion to say is drawn from the most veracious sources of history, will illustrate the correctness of these particulars.
One of the most remarkable instances of the sentiment of love, warmed into passion, yet without evil in its objects, is to be found in the true and touching history of Guillaume de Cabestaign, a noble youth of Roussillon. Though noble of birth, Guillaume was without fortune, and it was not thought improper or humiliating in those days that he should serve, as a page, the knight whose ancestors were known to his own as associates. It was in this capacity that he became the retainer of Raymond, Lord of Roussillon. Raymond, though a haughty baron, was one who possessed certain generous tastes and sentiments, and who showed himself capable of appreciating the talents and great merits of Guillaume de Cabestaign. His endowments, indeed were of a character to find ready favor with all parties. The youth was not only graceful of carriage, and particularly handsome of face and person, but he possessed graces of mind and manner which especially commended him to knightly sympathy and admiration. He belonged to that class of improvisatori to whom the people of Provence gave the name of troubadour, and was quite as ready to sing the praises of his mistress, as he was to mount horse, and charge with sword and lance in her defence and honor. His muse, taking her moral aspect from his own, was pure and modest in her behavior—indulging in no song or sentiment which would not fall becomingly on the most virgin ear. His verses were distinguished equally by their delicacy and fancy, and united to a spirit of the most generous and exulting life a taste of the utmost simplicity and purity. Not less gentle than buoyant, he was at once timid in approach, and joy-giving in society; and while he compelled the respect of men by his frank and fearless manhood, he won the hearts of the other sex by those gentle graces which, always prompt and ready, are never obtrusive, and which leave us only to the just appreciation of their value, when they are withdrawn from our knowledge and enjoyment.
It happened, unfortunately for our troubadour, that he won too many hearts. Raised by the Lord of Roussillon to the rank of gentleman usher to the Lady Marguerite, his young and beautiful wife, the graces and accomplishments of Guillaume de Cabestaign, soon became quite as apparent and agreeable to her as to the meanest of the damsels in her train. She was never so well satisfied as in his society; and her young and ardent soul, repelled rather than solicited by the stern nature of Raymond, her lord, was better prepared and pleased to sympathize with the more beguiling and accessible spirit of the page. The tenderest impressions of love, without her own knowledge, soon seized upon her heart; and she had learned to sigh as she gazed upon the person that she favored, long before she entertained the slightest consciousness that he was at all precious to her eyes. He himself, dutiful as devoted, for a long season beheld none of these proofs of favor on the part of his noble mistress. She called him her servant, it is true, and he as such, sung daily in her praises the equal language of the lover and the knight. These were words, however, of specific and conventional meaning, to which her husband listened with indifferent ear. In those days every noble lady entertained a lover, who was called her servant. It was a prerogative of nobility that such should be the case. It spoke for the courtliness and aristocracy of the party; and to be without a lover, though in the possession of a husband, was to be an object of scornful sympathy in the eyes of the sex. Fashion, in other words, had taken the name of chivalry; and it was one of her regulations that the noble lady should possess a lover, who should of necessity be other than her lord. In this capacity, Raymond of Roussillon, found nothing of which to complain in the devotion of Guillaume de Cabestaign to Marguerite, his wife. But the courtiers who gathered in her train were not so indulgent, or were of keener sight. They soon felt the preference which she gave, over all others, to our troubadour. They felt, and they resented it the more readily, as they were not insensible to his personal superiority. Guillaume himself, was exceeding slow in arriving at a similar consciousness. Touched with a fonder sentiment for his mistress than was compatible with his security, his modesty had never suffered him to suppose that he had been so fortunate as to inspire her with a feeling such as he now knew within himself. It was at a moment when he least looked for it, that he made the perilous discovery. It was in the course of a discussion upon the various signs of love—such a discussion as occupied the idle hours, and the wandering fancies of chivalry—that she said to him, somewhat abruptly,
“Surely thou, Guillaume, thou, who canst sing of love so tenderly, and with so much sweetness, thou, of all persons, should be the one to distinguish between a feigned passion and a real one. Methinks the eye of him who loves truly, could most certainly discover from the eye of the beloved one, whether the real flame were yet burning in her heart.”
And even as she spoke, the glance of her dark and lustrous eye settled upon his own with such a dewy and quivering fire, that his soul at once became enlightened with her secret. The troubadour was necessarily an improvisatore. Guillaume de Cabestaign was admitted to be one of the most spontaneous in his utterance of all his order. His lyre took for him the voice which he could not well have used at that overpowering moment. He sung wildly and triumphantly, inspired by his new and rapturous consciousness, even while her eyes were yet fixed upon him, full still of the involuntary declaration which made the inspiration of his song. These verses, which embodied the first impulsive sentiment which he had ever dared to breathe from his heart of the passion which had long been lurking within it, have been preserved for us by the damsels of Provence. We translate them, necessarily to the great detriment of their melody, from the sweet South, where they had birth, to our harsher Runic region. The song of Guillaume was an apostrophe.
Touch the weeping string!
Those whose beauty fires me;
Oh! how vainly would I sing
The passion that inspires me.