Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/144

122 On another occasion, pastoral fancy had to supply a literary form for political satire. It is hard to imagine a more bizarre product than Le Pastoralet, a very long poem by a partisan of Burgundy, who, in this pretty disguise, relates the murder of Louis of Orleans for the purpose of exculpating Jean sans Peur and of venting his spleen on the house of Orleans. The two hostile dukes represented by Tristifer and Léonet in an environment of country dances and ornaments of flowers, Tristifer-Orleans robbing the shepherds of their bread and cheese, apples and nuts, shepherd’s reeds and bells, and threatening them with his large crook, even the battle of Agincourt described in pastoral guise ... one would be inclined to think this style rather flamboyant, if we did not remember that Ariosto uses the same machinery for exculpating his patron, the Cardinal d’Este, who was hardly less guilty than Jean sans Peur.

The pastoral element is never absent from court festivities. It was admirably fitted both for masquerades and for political allegories. Here the bucolic conception coalesced with another of Scriptural origin: the prince and his people symbolized by the shepherd and his sheep, the duties of the ruler compared to those of the shepherd. Meschinot sings: