Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/85

63 God and the saints, or of chivalry and virtue. He has accustomed his servants to practise piety and observe decency; they have given up the habit of swearing. We shall find him again as one of the propagandists of faithful and chaste love, and as the founder of the order of “l’escu vert à la dame blanche,” for the defence of women, for which Christine de Pisan praised him. At Genoa, as a regent of the king of France, one day he courteously returned the curtsy of two ladies whom he met. “My lord”—said his squire—“who are those two women to whom you bowed so deeply?”—“Huguenin,” said he, “I do not know.” Then he said to him: “My lord, they are harlots.” “Harlots,” said he, “Huguenin, I would rather have paid my salutations to ten harlots than have omitted them to one respectable woman.” His device, resigned and enigmatical, is “What you will.”

Such are the colours of piety, austerity and fidelity in which the ideal image of a knight is painted. The real Boucicaut did not altogether resemble this portrait; no one would have expected it. He was neither free from violence nor from avarice, common faults in his class.

There are, however, patterns of chivalry of another type. The biographical romance about Jean de Bueil, entitled Le Jouvencel, was written half a century after Le Livre des Faicts of Boucicaut, which partly explains the differences. Jean de Bueil had fought under the banner of Joan of Arc. He had taken part in the rising called the Praguerie and in the war “du bien public”; he died in 1477. Fallen in disgrace with the king, he dictated, or rather suggested, about 1465, an account of his life to three of his servants. In contrast with the Life of Boucicaut, of which the historical form hardly conceals the romantic purpose, Le Jouvencel contains in fictitious garb a great deal of simple realism; this is so, at least, in the first part, for further on the authors have lost themselves in very insipid romanticism.

Jean de Bueil must have given his scribes a very lively narrative of his exploits. It would hardly be possible to quote in the literature of the fifteenth century another work giving as sober a picture as Le Jouvencel of the wars of those times. We find the small miseries of military life, its privations and boredom, gay endurance of hardships and courage in danger.