Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/92

70 to them and resumes his moral task in founding the order “de la dame blanche à l'escu vert.”

Like all romantic forms that are worn out as an instrument of passion, this apparatus of chivalry and of courtesy affects us at first sight as a silly and ridiculous thing. The accents of passion are heard in it no more save in some rare products of literary genius. Still, all these costly elaborated forms of social conduct have played their part as a decoration of life, as a framework for a living passion. In reading this antiquated love poetry, or the clumsy descriptions of tournaments, no exact knowledge of historical details avails without the vision of the smiling eyes, long turned to dust, which at one time were infinitely more important than the written word that remains.

Only a stray glimmer now reminds us of the passionate significance of these cultural forms. In the Vœu du Héron the unknown author makes Jean de Beaumont speak:

Nowhere does the erotic element of the tournament appear more clearly than in the custom of the knight’s wearing the