Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 1.djvu/584

562 his companions. And with tears Roland's voice breaks: "Sweet comrade, Oliver, son of the good count Renier, who held the March of Geneva; to break spear and pierce shield, and counsel loyally the good, and discomfit and vanquish villains, in no land was there better knight." Knowing his own death near, Roland tries to shatter his great sword, and then lies down upon it with his face toward Spain; he holds up his glove toward God in token of fealty; Gabriel accepts his glove and the angels receive his soul. This was the best of knighthood in the best of the chansons: and we see how close it was to what was best in life. As the fight moves on to Oliver's blow and Roland's pardon, to Roland's last deeds of Christian comradeship, and to his death, the eyes are critical indeed that do not swell with tears. The heroic pathos of this rough poem is great because the qualities which perished at Roncesvalles were so noble and so knightly.

The poem passes on to the vengeance taken by the emperor upon the Saracens, then to his return to Aix, and the short great scene between him and Aude, Roland's betrothed: "Where is Roland, the chief, who vowed to take me for his wife?" Charles weeps, and tears his white beard as he answers: "Sister, dear friend, you are asking about a dead man. But I will make it good to thee—there is Louis my son, who holds the Marches.…"

Aude replies: "Strange words! God forbid, and His saints and angels, that I should live after Roland." And she falls dead at the emperor's feet.

As was fitting, the poem closes with the trial of the traitor Ganelon, by combat. His defence is feudal: he had defied Roland and all his companions; his treachery was proper vengeance and not treason. But his champion is defeated, and Ganelon himself is torn in pieces by horses, while his relatives, pledged as hostages, are hanged. All of which is feudalism, and can be matched for savagery in many a scene from the Arthurian romances of chivalry—not always reproduced in modern versions.