Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/131

Rh sire, which would you prefer: that people spoke ill of your lady and that you found her good, or that she were well spoken of and you should find her bad?” The strict conception of honour obliged a gentleman to answer: “Lady, I should prefer to hear her well spoken of and that I should find her bad.”

Does a lady, neglected by her lover, break faith by choosing another? May a knight bereft of all hope of seeing his lady, whom a jealous husband keeps locked up, seek a new love? One step more and love questions will be treated as lawsuits, as in the Arrestz d’Amour of Martial d’Auvergne.

The courtly code did not serve exclusively for making verses; it claimed to be applicable to life, or at least to conversation. It is very difficult to pierce the clouds of poetry and to penetrate to the real life of the epoch. How far did courting and flirtation during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries come up to the requirements of the courtly system: or to the precepta of Jean de Meun? Autobiographical confessions are very rare at that epoch. Even when an actual love-affair is described with the intention of being accurate, the author cannot free himself from the accepted style and technical conceptions. We find an instance of this in the too lengthy narrative of a love-affair of an old poet and a young girl, which Guillaume de Machaut has given us in Le Livre du Voir-Dit. He was approaching his sixtieth year, when Peronnelle d’Armentiéres, of a noble family in Champagne, sent him, in 1362, her first rondel, in which she offered her heart to the celebrated poet, whom she did not know, and invited him to enter with her into a poetical love correspondence. The poor poet, sickly, blind of one eye, gouty, at once kindles. He replies to her rondel and an exchange of letters and of poems begins. Peronnelle is proud of her literary connection; she does not make a secret of it, and begs the poet to put in writing the true story of their love, inserting their letters and their poetry. Machaut readily complies.

“I shall make,” he says, “to your glory and praise, something that will be well remembered.”

“And, my very sweet heart, are you sorry because we have begun so late? By God, so am I; but here is the remedy: let us enjoy life as much as circumstances permit,