Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/56

36 for a moment of inattentiveness on the part of the queen, to seize her hand and kiss it. For once Spanish gravity was at fault; the court laughed.

All the trifling amenities of social intercourse are minutely regulated. Etiquette not only prescribes which ladies of the court may hold each other by the hand, but also which lady is entitled to encourage others to this mark of intimacy, by beckoning them. This right of beckoning, “hucher,” is a technical question for the old court lady Aliénor de Poitiers, who has described the ceremonial of the court of Burgundy. The departure of a guest is opposed with troublesome insistence. Philip the Good refuses to let the queen of France go on the day fixed by the king, in spite of the fear which the poor queen and her train felt for the anger of Louis XI.

Goethe has said that there is not an outward sign of politeness which has not a profound moral foundation, and Emerson expresses almost the same thought when calling politeness “virtue gone to seed.” It would, perhaps, be an exaggeration to say that at the end of the Middle Ages people were still fully conscious of the ethical value of politeness; but surely people still felt its æsthetic value, which marks the transition of these forms from sincere professions of affection to arid formalities of civility.

It is obvious that this rich adornment of life flourished nowhere so much as at the court of princes, where people could devote time to it and had room for it. This same cult of forms, however, spread downwards from the nobility to the middle classes, where they lingered on, after having become obsolete in higher circles. Customs such as that of urging a guest to have another helping of a dish, or to prolong his visit, of refusing to take precedence, now hardly fashionable, were in full bloom in the fifteenth century, scrupulously observed, though at the same time an object of satire.

Above all, public worship offered ample occasion for lengthy displays of civility. In the first place, there is the “offrande”; no one is willing to be the first to place his alms on the altar: Passez.—Non feray.—Or avant! Certes si ferez, ma cousine. —Non feray.—Huchez no voisine, Qu’elle doit mieux devant offrir.