Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/308

268 beaux nieps, c’est trop tard. Vous voulés clore l’estable quand le cheval est per du.’”

Poetry, too, used the trick of short alternating sentences a good deal.

Here the means have become the object. The virtuosity of these jerky dialogues was carried to an extreme in the ballad of Jean Meschinot, in which France accuses Louis XI. In each of the thirty lines, questions and answers alternate, sometimes more than once. Still, this bizarre form does not destroy the effect of the political satire. This is the first stanza:

With Froissart the sober and accurate description of outward circumstances sometimes acquires tragic force, just because it leaves out all psychological speculation, as for instance in the episode of the death of the young Gaston