Knights and their days

Butler, in his Hudibras (part iii. cant. 1), has amusingly illustrated the feeling which moved knights-errant, and the particular object they had in view: “the ancient errant knights,” he says:—

However willing a knight may have been to do homage to his lady, the latter, if she truly regarded the knight, never allowed his homage to her to be paid at the cost of injury to his country’s honor or his own. An instance of this is afforded us in the case of Bertrand de Guesclin. There never was man who struck harder blows when he was a bachelor; but when he went a wooing, and still more after he had wed the incomparable Tiphania, he lost all care for honor in the field, and had no delight but in the society of his spouse. The lady, however, was resolved that neither his sword nor his reputation should acquire rust through any fault or beauty of hers. She rallied him soundly on his home-keeping propensities, set them in contrast with the activity of his bachelor-days, and the renown acquired by it, and forthwith talked him out of her bower and into his saddle.

The English did not profit by the lady’s eloquence, for our forefathers never had a more gallant or more difficult adversary to deal with than Bertrand. Living, his name was a terror to them; and dying, he had the sympathy of those who had been his foes. Charles V. made him Constable of France, and appointed him a grave at the foot of his own royal tomb. De Guesclin would never have been half the man he was but for the good sense of his wife Tiphania.

There are many instances in romance which would seem to imply, that so strained was the sentiment which bound knights to respect ladies, it compelled them not to depart therefrom even in extreme cases, involving lightness of conduct and infidelity. The great northern chiefs, who were a sort of very rough knights in their way, were, however, completely under the distaff. Their wives could divorce themselves at will. Thus, in Erysbiggia Saga we read of Borck, an Icelandic chief, who, bringing home a guest whom his wife not only refused to welcome, but attempted to stab, administered such correction to his spouse in return, that the lady called in witnesses and divorced herself on the spot. Thereupon the household goods were divided among them, and the affair was rapidly and cheaply managed without the intervention of an Ecclesiastical Court. More modern chivalry would not have tolerated the idea of correcting even a faithless, much less a merely angry spouse. Indeed, the amatory principle was quite as strong as the religious one; and in illustration thereof, it has been remarked that the knight must have been more than ordinarily devout who had God on his right hand (the place of honor), and his lady on his left.

To ride at the ring was then the pleasantest pastime for knights; and ladies looked on and applauded the success, or laughed at the failures. The riding, without attempting to carry off the ring, is still common enough at our fairs, for children; but in France and Germany, it is seriously practised in both its simple and double forms, by persons of all ages, who glide round to the grinding of an organ, and look as grave as if they were on desperate business.

It is an undoubted matter of fact, that although a knight was bound to be tender in his gallantry, there were some to be found whose wooing was of the very roughest; and there were others who, if not rough, were rascally.

The old Rue des Lombards, in Paris, was at one time occupied exclusively by the “professed pourpoint-makers,” as a modern tailor might say. They carried on a flourishing trade, especially in times when men, like Bassompierre, thought nothing of paying, or promising to pay, fourteen thousand crowns for a pourpoint. When I say the street was thus occupied exclusively, I must notice an exception. There were a few other residents in it, the Jew money-lenders or usurers; and when I hear the old French proverb cited “patient as a Lombard,” I do not know whether it originally applied to the tailors or the money-lenders, both of whom were extensively cheated by their knightly customers. Here is an illustration of it, showing that all Jessicas have not been as lucky as Shylock’s daughter, and that some Jews have been more cruelly treated than Shylock’s daughter’s father—whom I have always considered as one of the most ill-used of men.

In the Rue des Lombards there dwelt a wealthy Jew, who put his money out at interest, and kept his daughter under lock and key at home. But the paternal Jew did not close his shutters, and the Lombard street Jessica, sitting all day at the window, attracted the homage of many passers-by. These were chiefly knights who came that way to be measured for pourpoints; and no knight was more attracted by the black eyes of the young lady in question, than the Chevalier Giles de Pontoise. That name indeed is one of a celebrated hero of a burlesque tragedy, but the original knight was “my Beverley.”

Giles wore the showiest pourpoint in the world; for which he had obtained long credit. It struck him that he would call upon the Jew to borrow a few hundred pistoles, and take the opportunity to also borrow the daughter. He felt sure of succeeding in both exploits; for, as he remarked, if he could not pay the money he was about to borrow, he could borrow it of his more prudent relatives, and so acquit himself of his debt. With regard to the lady, he had serenaded her, night after night, till she looked as ready to leap down to him as the Juliets who played to Barry’s Romeo;—and he had sung “Ecco ridente il sole,” or what was then equivalent to it, accompanied by his guitar, and looking as ridiculous the while, without being half so silvery-toned as Rubini in Almaviva, warbling his delicious nonsense to Rosina. Our Jew, like old Bartolo, was destined to pay the musician.

Giles succeeded in extracting the money required from the usurer, and he had like success in inducing the daughter to trust to his promises. He took the latter to Pontoise, deceived her by a mock-marriage, and spent all that he had borrowed from the father, in celebrating his pretended nuptials with the daughter. There never was a more recreant knight than Giles de Pontoise.

However, bills will become due, if noble or simple put their names to them, and the Jew claimed at once both his debt and his daughter. He failed in obtaining his money, but the lady he carried off by violence, she herself exhibiting considerable reluctance to leave the Château de Pontoise for the paternal dungeon in the Rue des Lombards.

This step brought Giles to a course of reflection. It was not of that quality which his confessor would have recommended, but rather of a satanic aspect. “In the usurer’s house,” thought Giles, “live the tailor to whom I am indebted for my pourpoint, the Jew who holds my promise to pay, and the pretty daughter of whom I have been so unjustly deprived. I will set fire to the house. If I burn tailor, money-lender, and the proofs of my liabilities, I shall have done a good night’s work, if I therewith can carry off little Jessica.”

Thereupon, Giles went down to the Rue des Lombards, and with such aid as was then easily purchasable, he soon wrapped the Jew’s dwelling in flames. Shylock looked to his papers and money-bags. The knight groped through the smoke and carried off the daughter. The Jew still held the promissory note of the Knight of Pontoise, whose incendiary act, however, had destroyed half of one side of the Rue des Lombards. Therewith had perished reams of bonds which made slaves of chevaliers to Jew money-lenders. “Sic vos non vobis,” thought Giles, “but at all events, if he has my bill, I have possession of Jessica.”

The Jew held as much to his daughter as to his ducats. He persecuted the pretended husband with a pertinacity which eventually overcame Giles de Pontoise. A compromise was effected. The knight owed the usurer three thousand golden crowns, and had stolen from him his only daughter. Giles agreed to surrender his “lady,” on condition that the money-lender should sign an acquittance of the debt. This done, the Jew and daughter walked homeward, neither of them well satisfied with the result of their dealings with a knight.

The burnt-out Lombarder turned round at the threshold of the knight’s door, with a withering sneer, like Edmund Kean’s in Shylock when he was told to make haste and go home, and begin to be a Christian. “It is little but sorrow I get by you, at all events,” said the Jew to the Chevalier.

“Do you make so light of your grandson?” asked Giles. And with this Parthian dart he shut his door in the face of the trio who were his victims.

This knight was a victimizer; but below we have an illustration of knights victimized through too daring affection.

The great Karloman may be said to have been one of those crowned knights who really had very little of the spirit of chivalry in him, with respect to ladies. He married, successfully, two wives, but to neither did he allow the title of Empress. It is, however, not with his two wives, but his two daughters and their chevaliers par amours, with whom we have now to do.

In the Rue de la Harpe, in Paris, may be seen the remains, rather than the ruins, of the old building erected by the Emperor Julian, and which was long known by the name of the “old palace.” It served as a palace about a thousand years and half a century ago, when one night there drew up before it a couple of knights, admirably mounted, and rather roughly escorted by a mob, who held up their lanterns to examine the riders, and handled their pikes as if they were more ready to massacre the knights than to marshal them.

All the civility they received on this February night was of a highly equivocal nature. They were admitted, indeed, into the first and largest court of the palace, but the old seneschal locked and barred the gate behind them. An officer too approached to bid them welcome, but he had hardly acquitted himself of his civil mission when he peremptorily demanded of them the surrender of their swords.

“We are the King’s own messengers,” said one of the knights, rather puzzled at the reception vouchsafed to them;—“and we have, moreover, a despatch to deliver, written in our gracious master’s own hand,” remarked the second knight.

“Vive Louis le Debonnaire!” exclaimed the seneschal; “how fares it with our sovereign?”

“As well as can be,” was the reply, “with a monarch who has been engaged six whole weeks at Aix, in burying his father and predecessor, Charlemagne. Here is his missive.” This missive was from Louis the Frolicsome, or Louis the Good-Natured, or Louis of Fair Aspect. He was morose, wittily disposed, and ill-featured;—but then the poet-laureate had given him his fine name; and the king wore it as if it had been fairly won. He had clipped, shaved, and frocked, all his natural brothers, and then shut them up in monasteries. He had no more respect for treaties than he had for Mohammed, and by personal example he taught perjury and rebellion to those whom he cruelly punished when they imitated their exalted instructor. The seneschal perused the letter addressed to him by his royal correspondent, and immediately requested the two knights to enter the palace itself.

They were ushered into a lofty-arched apartment on the ground floor, which ordinarily served as an ante-room for the guards on duty; it was for the moment, however, empty. They who have visited the old Palais de Thermes, as it is called, have, doubtlessly, remarked and admired this solid relic of the past.

After entering, the seneschal once more lifted the despatch to the flambeau, read it through, looked at the seal, then at the knights, coughed uneasily, and began to wear an air of dislike for some duty imposed upon him. He repeated, as if he were learning by rote, the names Raoul de Lys and Robert de Quercy. “Those are our names,” observed the first; “we have ridden hither by the king’s orders to announce his coming; and having done so, let us have fire and food, lest we be famished and frozen before he arrives.”

“Hem!” muttered the seneschal, “I am extremely sorry; but, according to this letter, you are my prisoners, and till to-morrow you must remain in this apartment;” and, seeing them about to remonstrate, he added, “You will be quite at liberty here, except, of course, that you can’t get out; you will have separate quarters to-morrow.”

It was in vain that they inquired the reason for their detention, the nature of the charge alleged against them, or what they had further to expect. The seneschal dryly referred them to the monarch. He himself knew nothing more than his orders, and by them he was instructed to keep the two friends in close confinement till the sovereign’s arrival. “On second thoughts,” said the seneschal, “I must separate you at once. There is the bell in the tower of St. Jacques ringing midnight, and to-morrow will be upon us, before its iron tongue has done wagging. I really must trouble one of you gentlemen to follow me.” The voice was not so civil as the words, and after much parleying and reluctance, the two friends parted. Robert bade Raoul be of good cheer; and Raoul, who was left behind, whispered that it would be hard, indeed, if harm was to come to them under such a roof.

The roof, however, of this royal palace, looked very much like the covering of a place in which very much harm might be very quietly effected. But there were dwelling there two beings who might have been taken for spirits of good, so winning, so natural, and so loveable were the two spirits in question. They were no other than the two daughters of Charlemagne, Gisla and Rotrude. The romancers, who talk such an infinite deal of nonsense, say of them that their sweet-scented beauty was protected by the prickles of principle. The most rapid of analysers may see at once that this was no great compliment to the ladies. It was meant, however, to be the most refined flattery; and the will was accepted for the deed.

Now, the two knights loved the two ladies, and if they had not, neither Father Daniel nor Sainte Foix could have alluded to their amorous history; nor Father Pasquale, of the Convent of the Arminians in Venice, have touched it up with some of the hues of romance, nor Roger de Beauvoir have woven the two together, nor unworthy ægomet have applied it to the illustration of daring lovers.

These two girls were marvellously high-spirited. They had been wooed by emperors; but feeling no inclination to answer favorably to the wooing, Charlemagne generously refused to put force upon their affections, and bade them love only where their hearts directed them. This “license” gave courage to numberless nobles of various degrees, but Rotrude and Gisla said nay to all their regular advances. The Princesses were, in fact, something like Miss Languish, thought love worth nothing without a little excitement, and would have considered elopement as the proper preceder of the nuptial ceremony. Their mother, Hildegarda, was an unexceptional woman, but, like good Queen Charlotte, who let her daughters read Polly Honeycombe as well as Hannah More, she was a little confused in the way she taught morals, and the young Princesses fell in love, at the first opportunity, with gallant gentlemen of—as compared with princesses—rather low degree. In this respect, there is a parallel between the house of Karloman and some other houses of more modern times.

Louis le Debonnaire had, as disagreeable brothers will have, an impertinent curiosity respecting his sisters’ affairs. He was, here, the head of his family, and deemed himself as divinely empowered to dispose of the hearts of these ladies, as of the families and fortunes of his people. He had learned the love-passages that had been going on, and he had hinted that when he reached the old palace in Paris, he would make it as calmly cold as a cloister, and that there were disturbed hearts there, which should be speedily restored to a lasting tranquillity. The young ladies did not trouble themselves to read the riddle of a brother who was for ever affecting much mystery. But they prepared to welcome his arrival, and seemed more than ordinarily delighted when they knew that intelligence of his approaching coming had been brought by the two knights then in the castle.

Meanwhile, Raoul de Lys sat shivering on a stone bench in the great guard-room. He subsequently addressed himself to a scanty portion of skinny wild boar, very ill-cooked; drank, with intense disgust, part of a flask of hydromel of the very worst quality; and then having gazed on the miniature of Rotrude, which he took from beneath the buff jerkin under his corslet, he apostrophized it till he grew sleepy, upon which he blew out his lamp, and threw himself on an execrably hard couch. He was surprised to find that he was not in the dark. There was very good reason for the contrary.

As he blew out his lamp, a panel in the stone wall glided noiselessly open, and Robert de Quercy appeared upon the threshold—one hand holding a lamp, the other leading a lady. The lady was veiled; and she and the knight hurriedly approached Raoul, who as hurriedly rushed forward to meet them. He had laid his armor by; and they who recollect Mr. Young in Hotspur, and how he looked in tight buff suit, before he put his armor on, may have some idea of the rather ridiculous guise in which Raoul appeared to the lady. But she was used to such sights, and had not time to remark it even had she not been so accustomed.

Raoul observing that Robert was accompanied only by Gisla, made anxious inquiry for Rotrude. Gisla in a few words told him that her sister would speedily be with them, that there was certain danger, even death, threatening the two cavaliers, and probable peril menacing—as Gisla remarked, with a blush—those who loved them. The King, she added, had spoken angrily of coming to purify the palace, as she had heard from Count Volrade, who appears to have been a Polonius, as regards his office, with all the gossip, but none of the good sense, of the old chamberlain in Denmark.

“Death to us!” exclaimed Robert. “Accursed be the prince who transgresses the Gospel admonition, not to forget his own or his father’s friends.” “We were the favored servants of Charlemagne,” said Raoul. “We were of his closest intimacy,” exclaimed Robert. “Never,” interrupted Raoul, “did he ascend his turret to watch the stars, without summoning us, his nocturnal pages, as he called us, to his side.” “He dare not commit such a crime; for the body of Charlemagne is scarcely sealed down in its tomb; and Louis has not a month’s hold of the sceptre.”

“He holds it firmly enough, however, to punish villany,” exclaimed Louis himself, as he appeared in the doorway leading to a flight of stone stairs by which Gisla had indicated the speedy appearance of Rotrude.

And here I would beseech my readers to believe that if the word “tableau!” ought to be written at this situation, and if it appears to them to be too melo-dramatic to be natural, I am not in fault. I refer them to all the histories and romances in which this episode in knightly story is told, and in all they will find that Louis makes his appearance exactly as I have described, and precisely like Signor Tamburini in the great scene of Lucrezia Borgia.

Louis having given expression to his startling bit of recitative, dragged forward Rotrude, whom he had held behind him, by the wrist. The background was occupied by four guards, wearing hoods; and I can not think of them without being reminded of those same four old guards, with M. Desmousseaux at their head, who always represented the Greek or Roman armies upon the stage of the Théâtre Français, when Talma was the Nero or the Sylla, the Orestes or the Capitolinus of the night.

With some allusion to Rotrude as a sacred dove, and to himself as a bird-catcher, Louis handed his sister to a stone bench, and then grew good-natured in his remarks. This sudden benevolence gave a chill to the entire company. They turned as pale as any Russian nobleman to whom Nicholas was extraordinarily civil.

“We know the winding passages of the palace of Thermes,” said Louis, laughingly, “as well as our sisters; and I have not gone through them to-night for the purpose of terrifying the sister whom I encountered there, or the other sister whom I see here. I am a kind-hearted brother, and am marvellously well-disposed. I need only appeal to these four gentlemen of my guard, who will presently take off their hoods, and serve as witnesses this night in a little ceremony having reference to my dear Rotrude.”

“A ceremony! this night!” exclaimed the two princesses.

“Ay, by the nails of the cross! Two ceremonies. You shall both be married forthwith. I will inaugurate my reign by a double wedding, here in the old palace of Thermes. You, Gisla, shall espouse Robert, Count de Quercy, and you, Rotrude, shall wed with Raoul, Baron de Lys. You might have aimed higher, but they are gallant gentlemen, friends of my deceased sire; and, by my sooth, the nuptials shall not lack state and ceremony! Here are our wedding-gifts to the bridegrooms.”

He pointed to two showy suits of armor, the pieces of which were carried by the four guards. The knights were in a dream of delight. They vowed eternal gratitude to the most noble of emperors and unparalleled of brothers.

“We have no great faith in human gratitude,” said Louis, “and shall not expect from you more than is due. And you, my sisters,” added he, “retire for awhile; put on what you will; but do not tarry here at the toilette of men-at-arms, like peasant-girls looking at the equipping of two pikemen.”

The two princesses withdrew; and there would have been a smile upon their lips, only that they suspected their brother. Hoping the best, however, they kissed the tips of their rosy fingers to the knights, and tripped away, like two pets of the ballet. They were true daughters of their sire, who reckoned love-passages as even superior to stricken fields. He was not an exemplary father, nor a faithful husband. His entourage was not of the most respectable; and in some of his journeys he was attended by the young wife of one of his own cavaliers, clad in cavalier costume. It was a villanously reprobate action, not the less so that Hermengarde was living. The mention of it will disgust every monarch in Europe who reads my volume; and I am sure that it will produce no such strong sensation of reproof anywhere as in the bosom of an admirable personage “over the water.”

The two princesses, then, had not so much trouble from the prickles of principle as the romances told of them. But, considering the example set them by their imperial father, they were really very tolerable princesses, under the circumstances.

“Don your suits, gentlemen!” exclaimed the king.

The four guards advanced with the separate pieces of armor, at which the two knights gazed curiously for a moment or two, as two foxes might at a trap in which lay a much-desired felicity. They were greatly delighted, yet half afraid. The monarch grew impatient, and the knights addressed themselves at once to their adornment. They put aside their own armor, and with the assistance of the four mute gentlemen-at-arms they fitted on the brassards or arm-pieces, which became them as though the first Milainer who ever dressed knight had taken their measure. With some little trouble they were accoutred, less as became bridegrooms than barons going to battle; and this done, they took their seats, at a sign from the king, who bade the four gentlemen come to an end with what remained of the toilette.

The knights submitted, not without some misgiving, to the services of the four mysterious valets! and, in a short time, the preparations were complete, even to the helmet with the closed visor. This done, the knights took their places, or were led rather to two high-backed oaken chairs. As soon as they were seated there, the four too-officious attendants applied their hands to the closed head-pieces; and in a very brief space the heads of the cavaliers sunk gently upon their breasts, as if they were in deep slumber or as deep meditation.

Two o’clock rang out from the belfry of St. Jacques, as the two brides entered. The king pointed with a smile to the bridegrooms, and left the apartment with his attendants. The ladies thought that the lovers exhibited little ardor or anxiety to meet them; for they remained motionless on their oaken chairs. The daughters of Charlemagne advanced, half-timidly, half-playfully; and, at length, finding the knights not disposed to address them, gently called to each by his name. Raoul and Robert continued motionless and mute. They were in fact dead. They had been strangled or suffocated in a peculiar sort of armor, which had been sent to Charlemagne from Ravenna, in return for a jewelled vase presented by that emperor to the ancient city. “In 1560,” says Monsieur Roger de Beauvoir, himself quoting an Italian manuscript, there were several researches made in this part of the palace of Thermes, one result of which was the discovery of a ‘casque à soufflet,’ all the openings in which could be closed in an instant by a simple pressure of the finger on a spring. At the same instant the lower part of the neck-piece tightened round the throat, and the patient was disposed of. “In this helmet,” adds the author, “was found the head of a man, well preserved, with beard and teeth admirable for their beauty.” I think, however, that in this matter M. de Beauvoir proves a little too much.

Father Daniel, in his history notices the vengeance of Louis le Debonnaire against two young nobles who were, reputedly, the lovers of Gisla and Rotrude. The details of the act of vengeance have been derived from an Italian source; and it is said that an Italian monk, named Pagnola, had some prominent part in this dreary drama, impelled thereto by a blow dealt to him at the hands of Raoul, by way of punishment for some contemptuous phrases which the monk had presumed to apply to the great Charlemagne.

Love and sword-blades seem to have been as closely connected as “Trousseaux et Layettes,” which are always named together in the shop-fronts of a Parisian “Lingere.” There was once an ample field for the accommodation of both the sentiments of love and bravery in the old Chaussée d’Antin, when it was merely a chaussée or highway, and not the magnificent street it now is. It was, down even to comparatively modern times, the resort of lovers of every degree, from dukes and duchesses to common dragoons and dairymaids. They were not always, however, under this strict classification.

But whatever classification or want of it there may have been, there was a part of the road which was constantly the scene of bloody encounters. This was at the narrow bridge of Arcans. Here if two cavaliers met, each with a lady at his side, it was a matter of honor not to give way. On the contrary, the latter was to be forced at the point of the sword. While the champions were contending, the ladies would scarcely affect to faint; they would stand aside, remain unconcerned on their jennets or mules, till the two simpletons had pinked one another; or lounge in their cumbrous coaches till the lovers limped back to them.

It was on this bridge, of which no vestige now remains, not even in a museum, that the Count de Fiesque one evening escorting Madame de Lionne, encountered M. de Tallard, who was chaperoning Louison d’Arquien. Each couple was in a carriage, and neither would make way for the other to pass. Thereupon the two cavaliers leaped from their coaches, drew their swords, planted their feet firmly on the ground, and began slashing at each other like two madmen, to the great delight of a large crowd who enjoyed nothing so much as the sight of two noble gentlemen cutting one another’s throats.

The ladies, meanwhile, flourished their handkerchiefs from their respective carriage-windows, for the encouragement of their champions. Now and then each laughed aloud when her particular friend had made a more than ordinary successful thrust; and each was generous enough to applaud any especial dexterity, even when her own lover thereby bloodily suffered. The two foolish fellows only poked at each other with the more intensity. And when they had sufficiently slit their pourpoints and slashed their sleeves, the ladies, weary of waiting any longer for a more exciting denouement, rushed between the combatants, like the Sabine ladies between the contending hosts; each gentleman gallantly kissed the lady who did not belong to him; and the whole four gayly supped together, as though they had been the best friends in the world.

This incident fairly brings us to the questions of duelling and death, as illustrated by chivalry.