That suffer me to love her;
And in my joy I sorrow,
And in my tears I sing her,
The love that others hide away,
She suffers me to bring her.
This right is due my homage,
For while they speak her beauty,
’Tis I alone that feel it well,
And love with perfect duty.
It does not appear that love trespassed in this instance beyond the sweet but narrow boundaries of sentiment. The lovers met daily, as usual, secretly as well as publicly, and their professions of attachment were frankly made in the hearing of the world; but the vows thus spoken were not articulated any longer in that formal, conventional phraseology and manner, which, in fact, only mocked the passion which it affectedly professed. It was soon discovered that the songs of Guillaume de Cabestaign were no longer the frigid effusions of mere gallantry, the common, stilt style of artifice and commonplace. There was life, and blood, and a rare enthusiasm in his lyrics. His song was no longer a thing of air, floating, as it had done, on the winglets of a simple fancy, but a living and a burning soul, borne upward and forward, by the gales of an intense and earnest passion. It was seen, that when the poet and his noble mistress spoke together, the tones of their voices mutually trembled as if with a strange and eager sympathy. When they met, it was noted that their eyes seemed to dart at once into each other, with the intensity of two wedded fires, which high walls would vainly separate, and which, however sundered, show clearly that they will overleap their bounds, and unite themselves in one at last. Theirs was evidently no simulated passion. It was too certainly real, as well in other eyes as their own. The world, though ignorant of the mutual purity of their hearts, were yet quick enough to discern what were their real sentiments. They saw the affections of which they soon learned, naturally enough, to conjecture the worst only. The rage of rivals, the jealousy of inferiors, the spite of the envious, the malice of the wantonly scandalous, readily found cause of evil where in reality offence was none. To conceive the crime, was to convey the cruel suspicion, as a certainty, to the mind of him whom the supposed offence most affected. Busy tongues soon assailed the ears of the Lord of Roussillon, in relation to his wife. They whispered him to watch the lovers—to remark the eager intimacy of their eyes—the tremulous sweetness of their voices, and their subdued tones whenever they met—the frequency of their meetings—the reluctance with which they separated; and they dwelt with emphasis upon the pointed and passionate declarations, the intensity and ardor of the sentiments which now filled the songs of the troubadour—so very different from what they had ever been before. In truth, the new passion of Guillaume had wrought wondrously in favor of his music. He who had been only a clever and dextrous imitator of the artificial strains of other poets, had broken down all the fetters of convention, and now poured forth the most natural and original poetry of his own, greatly to the increase of his reputation as a troubadour.