Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/307

Rh the effect of a light in the dark was first successfully achieved by Geertgen of Sint Jan of Haarlem, in his "Nativity," but long before this the illuminators had tried to render the light of the torches reflected on the cuirasses in the scene of the apprehension of Christ. The master who illuminated the Cuer d'Amours espris by King René had already succeeded in painting a sunrise and the most mysterious twilights, the master of the "Heures d’Ailly" a sun breaking through the clouds after a thunderstorm. On the other hand, the literary means for rendering the effects of light were still primitive. But, perhaps, we should seek in another direction the literary equivalent of this faculty for fixing the impression of a moment. It would rather seem to lie in the current use, in the literature of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, of oratio recta. At no other epoch has the effect of direct speech been so eagerly sought. The endless dialogues of which Froissart makes use, even to make a political situation clear, are often empty enough, nay, even tedious; still sometimes the impression of something immediate and instantaneous is produced in a very vivid manner, for instance in the following dialogue, which we should think of as being shouted. "Lors il entendi les nouvelles que leur ville estoit prise. 'Et de quel gens?' demande-il. Respondirent ceulx qui à luy parloient: 'Ce sont Bretons!'—'Ha,' dist-il, 'Bretons sont mal gent, ils pilleront et ardront la ville et puis partiront.' 'Et quel cry crient-ils?' dist le chevalier.—'Certes, sire, ils crient La Trimouille!'"

To quicken the movement of the dialogue Froissart is rather too fond of the trick of making one interlocutor repeat with astonishment the last words of the other.—"'Monseigneur, Gaston est mort.'—'Mort?' dist le conte.—'Certes, mort est-il pour vray, monseigneur.'"

And elsewhere: "Si luy demanda, en cause d'amours et de lignaige, conseil.—'Conseil,' respondi l'archevesque, 'certes,