Let us pause awhile by the tomb before we attempt to review the character of Blanche de Castille; and meanwhile we may see how the news of her death was received by Saint Louis. He was at Jaffa when, after a long delay, the intelligence reached him. At the very first ominous words of the papal legate who had come to break the tidings to him Saint Louis gave way to uncontrollable emotion. Consolation was unavailing; even the clergy seemed to realize that it would have been but an impertinent aggravation; and for two days no one ventured to speak to him. Then, rousing himself from the depths of his grief, he sent for that best and sturdiest of his friends, the fearless, honest, blunt Sire de Joinville, Seneschal of Champagne, who leaves us an account of what followed. When Joinville came into the presence, the king rose, and, stretching out his arms to him, cried in simple grief: "Ah! Seneschal! I have lost my mother!" Joinville replied: "Sire, I do not marvel at it, for she had to die; but I do marvel that you, a wise man, should mourn so deeply; you know that in the words of Wisdom it is said that, whatever grief a man have at his heart, none of it should be seen in his countenance; for he who does so (i. e., shows his grief) rejoices the heart of his enemies and brings sorrow to his friends." As all consolation would have been inadequate to the magnitude of the loss, we do not know that anyone could have spoken better than Joinville. The Seneschal continues: "Madame Marie de Vertus, a very good and pious woman, came to tell me that Queen Marguerite, who had rejoined the king a little before, was in great grief, and prayed me to go to her and comfort her. When I arrived I saw that she was weeping, and I said to her that he spoke truth who maintained that one ought not to believe women; for she who is dead was the person in the world whom you most hated, and yet you display such grief for her. And she told me that it was not for the Queen that she wept, but for the suffering and the grief of the King, and for her little daughter, now left in the care of men."
There is no quality more to be admired in one who attempts to write a life of some great man or woman than fearless frankness; the passages we have given are characteristic of the Vie de Saint Louis, by the Sire de Joinville, whose straightforward bluntness of speech is an amusing but also a valuable quality. We shall keep Joinville in mind while concluding, in brief, the story of Saint Louis's return and of the subsequent career of Marguerite.
More than a year of misery and futile battling intervened between the time when the news of his mother's death reached Louis and the time when he set sail for France. There was no hope of succor from Europe: there was no Queen Blanche to husband the resources of France that her son might continue his fight for the faith. On April 25, 1254, Saint Louis, accompanied by Marguerite, their little son Jean Tristan, and the remnant of the crusaders, embarked at Acre. The sea was rough, and when they were off the coast of Cyprus the vessel bearing the royal family ran on a sand bank. The nurses rushed frantically to arouse the queen, and asked her what they should do with the children. Marguerite, thinking all would be lost in the violence of the storm, said: "Neither waken them nor move them; let them go to God in their sleep." Saint Louis, urged to transfer himself and his family into another vessel, refused to do so, resolving to take the risk with those who had to remain and might be forced to land in Cyprus: "If I leave this vessel, there are on it five hundred men, each one of whom loves his life as much as I love mine, and who may have to stay in this island, and they may never return to their own country. That is why I had rather place in the hands of God my person, my wife, and my children, than cause such great suffering to the many people in this ship."
Joinville narrates another accident during this voyage, one which will recall the instructions for extinguishing one's candle given in a previous chapter. It seems that one of the queen's ladies, having undressed her, carelessly threw over the little iron lantern in which the candle was burning an end of the cloth she had used to wrap up the queen's head. The cloth caught fire, and in its turn set fire to the bedding, which was all ablaze when the queen awoke. Jumping out of bed toute nue, she seized the blazing stuff and threw it overboard, and put out the little fire which had started in the wood of the bed. The cry of fire arose, however, and Joinville tells us that he went to keep the sailors quiet, and later asked Marguerite to go to the king, who had been disturbed and excited by the noise.
We hear little more of Marguerite after this crusade. In spite of his affection and respect for her, and in spite of his gratitude for her conduct during his first crusade, Saint Louis did not think his wife capable of playing the rôle of Blanche de Castille, to which some say she unwisely aspired. When he was preparing for his second crusade, in 1270, he not only did not leave her the regency, although she was to remain in France, but he took unusual care to regulate her expenditures and to hedge about her prerogatives. He forbade her to receive any presents for herself or her children, to meddle with the administration of justice, or to choose any person for her service without the consent of the council of regents. That his precautions were not altogether without excuse, we see when we learn that Marguerite was already thinking about securing her position, in case of her husband's death, by making her son Philippe promise under oath that he would remain in tutelage until he was thirty years of age; that he would take no councillor without her approval; that he would inform her of all designs hostile to her influence; that he would make no treaty with his uncle, Charles d'Anjou; and that he would keep these engagements secret. The young Philippe had himself absolved from his oath by the Pope. The ambition of Marguerite, however, died with the husband whom she had loved and whom all Europe mourned. The good King Louis is a figure so heroic in some of its aspects that one must pause and take thought before venturing on any criticism: his motives cannot be impugned, and it were an ungrateful task to find fault with his deeds in any particular.
Marguerite lived on long after her husband in the convent she had founded in the Faubourg Saint-Marcel, which she gave to the nuns in perpetuity, reserving only a life interest for her daughter, Blanche. It was here that she was living when she had the joy of hearing proclaimed the canonization of Louis IX., the saintly King of France. This was just before her death in 1295.
There are figures in history which have become woefully distorted in the disfiguring mists of centuries, and others which have been not less wronged by prejudice, partisanship, or conscious or unconscious misrepresentation. These--at least some of these--have been in part indemnified and set right before the world: Louis XI. in France, and his contemporary Richard III. in England; Cleopatra, Catherine de Medici, Mary of England, all these and a host of others, we are told now and then, have been misunderstood by the world; nay, in this century of universal charity, this century which is undertaking the task of righting all the wrongs accumulated from the past, one can find apologists for the enemy of mankind himself. The moral of this homily is--it may be apparent to some of my readers--that if you are either very good or very bad you get much talked about in history: there will be some to defend you no matter how bad you are, and some to denounce you no matter how good you are. But if you simply do your duty, without fear and without advertisement, little will be said of you; history, at least in traditions still partly ruling, does not dignify with the epithet "great" the steady day-laborers who go about their task and complete it in silence. This, I would imply, is partly the reason why Blanche de Castille has never been heralded as great, and why her work in the upbuilding of the French monarchy is taken as a matter of course, and not praised like, for example, the more brilliant exploits of the "Grande Monarque" who was to do so much to undermine the power of that monarchy.
The fame of the mother is eclipsed by the peculiar glory of the son; but would it not be fair to ask how much of the excellence of Louis the man, how much of the glory of Louis the king, was due to Blanche de Castille? It cannot be questioned that she found France in a condition most perilous, threatened with the loss of all that two reigns had won for the royal power. A glance at the history of her career will show that she not only averted this danger, but that the crown was stronger when she began to relinquish her authority than it had been under Louis VIII. She reduced her rebellious vassals to submission; she more than held her own against England; she ended the war against Raymond of Toulouse, and reserved for France the control, immediate or ultimate, of the greater part of his dominions; and these things she accomplished, not merely by force, but by wise and patient policy. Louis IX. owed his crown to Blanche's care as regent; it is not improbable that he owed her as much during the years when he himself was on the throne and she but a counsellor. History is silent on many points in this connection, but it might be noted that it was through disregard of her earnest advice that he entered on the crusade which resulted so disastrously. She knew that, even if it had been successful from the point of view of the Church, it could but be dangerous, perhaps even ruinous, for France. This is one case in which we know Saint Louis rejected his mother's guidance, and what came of it is matter of history; might there not be many another act of his, more successful in its issue, for which the credit should go to Blanche?
As a queen, Blanche de Castille was more than capable; it is only the absence of great battles, great social, religious, and economic movements, during her ascendency, that hinders our calling her, without reservation, a great queen. When we look at Blanche the woman, we are confronted with a like difficulty. Shall we say she was a saint? Her son, the son whom she bore, whom she reared with unexampled care, whom she watched over all her life, has been called a saint, and there is no one to say him nay. Shall we say that the mother of a saint is, ex officio, or even by courtesy, also a saint? We cannot claim sanctity for Queen Blanche: there was in her a touch of the temper of her grand-mother, Eleanor of Guienne of wicked memory, or mayhap a trace of the Plantagenet. It is interesting to note that the best qualities of the vigorous Henry II. tempered the woman's nature of this daughter of Spain and gave her the stamina, the unconquerable spirit, which alone could save her. This Plantagenet temper is under excellent control in Queen Blanche; so excellent, indeed, that under some circumstances she seems cold. She is not cold, she is cool, a very different thing; no danger, no excitement, no sudden gust of resentment at an insult, can make her lose her head and act rashly. She is a thorough politician, making her feelings, her emotions, subservient to her will, and even, as we have hinted, playing the lover for the sake of controlling an amorous and uncertain vassal. Danger nerves her to action, and she acts with promptitude and firmness. At the defects in her character we have already hinted in part; the fundamental one, when we consider Blanche the woman, was her love of power. Ambitious she was; and yet, when we say this, we must not forget that she sought power not for herself, but for her son. How quietly she relinquishes her authority, and how ready she is, even when that authority is at its height, to tell Thibaud de Champagne that he owes his preservation to "the great goodness of my son, the King, who came to your aid"! But it was her jealousy of Marguerite de Provence that was the great blemish on Blanche's character. It was a meanness unworthy of a nature so generous and so faithful; we can attempt no defence, we can only express regret. Her personality exerted a powerful influence over those with whom she came in contact, and from all the best men of her time she received due meed of praise. Compare her with other women of her day, and there is none who can be placed beside Blanche la bonne reine, or Blanche la bonne mère.
BESIDE such a figure as that of Blanche de Castille, the women of whom we might next speak would seem pale ghosts, mere masks and shadows; and, even then, not always pleasing ones. There are, in fact, no immediate successors of Blanche and her daughter-in-law in the history of France; there is an interregnum, so to speak, of good, great, even of notorious women; in this inter-regnum, therefore, let us see how chivalry and literature were treating woman, what was the ideal, and what was the real woman in the artistic world at this time.
Between the tenth and the sixteenth centuries Europe saw the birth, the growth, the culmination, the decay, and finally the displacement of those ideals and those customs which we associate with the word "chivalry." The subject of chivalry, interesting in itself, is also one of peculiar interest for us, since chivalry affected in no small degree the condition of women; but with its primal origin we shall not attempt to deal: we shall dig up no roots, but only do our best to describe the glorious tree itself and the soil in which it flourished. We shall find that chivalry, like all other earthly things, has its leprous spots, which one must keep out of sight if one would pour forth genuine and unchecked enthusiasm; yet the good and the bad alike must be understood if we would have a just conception of the whole.
We have seen in the case of the troubadours something of the nature of the extravagant amorous devotion avowed for his lady by the knightly poet. Though this exaggerated passion and romance is one of the concomitants, it is not the fundamental idea or the best part of chivalry. Originally, perhaps, a mere association for mutual defence and support, the order of knighthood soon came to have a deeper and a better purpose, a wider significance; it assumed the sanctity of a religious institution, for which long years of careful preparation were deemed necessary, and which imposed serious duties.
To defend the weak and the oppressed was what the soldier of God swore to do; and first in the list of those needing his defence were women. The knight was not only the sworn defender of woman from all physical wrong and oppression, but he must guard the honor of her name. Courteous and gentle he must be toward women himself, and from others less gentle he must compel at least outward respect. In the statutes of many an order of knighthood we find provisions like those set forth by Louis de Bourbon when, in 1363, he established the order of the Golden Shield: "He enjoined (the knights) to abstain from swearing and blaspheming the name of God; above all, he enjoined them to honor dames et damoiselles, not submitting to hear ill spoken of them; because from them, after God, comes the honor men receive; so that speaking ill of women, who from the weakness of their sex have no means of defending themselves, is losing all sense of honor, and shaming and dishonoring oneself." It was also about this time that Marshal Boucicaut established the order of the Knights of the Green Shield, fourteen in number, whose special purpose was the defence of women, and on whose shields was a blazon representing a woman clothed in white. This same sentiment we find persisting even in Brantôme: "If an honest woman would maintain her firmness and constancy, her devoted servitor must not spare even his life to defend her if she runs the least risk in the world, whether of her honor or of evil-speaking; even as I have seen some who have stopped all the wicked tongues of the court when they came to speak ill of their ladies, whom, according to the devoirs of chivalry, we are bound to serve as champions in their affliction."
The devotion to woman which we find becoming the dominant feature of the chivalrous ideal rises at times to sheer extravagance, mere moonshine madness. A knight vows devotion to his lady-love; to prove that he is the truest lover in the world and she the fairest dame, he wears a patch over one eye and engages in mortal combat with anyone who ventures to smile at this absurdity. Another takes his station on the highway and compels every passing knight to joust with him, because he has vowed to break three hundred lances in thirty days in the honor of his lady. Or there is Geoffrey Rudel, who falls in love with the Countess of Tripoli on hearsay; they say she is the most beautiful and lovable woman in the world; therefore he loves her, and therefore he goes on a crusade that he may see the lady. On the voyage he falls ill, and lands in Tripoli sick nigh unto death. The lovely countess, touched by the tales of his devotion, comes to his bedside; at once the glow of health returns to the dying lover, who praises God for preserving his life long enough to permit him to see his lady. When he died, soon after,--for the sight of the lady did not effect a permanent cure,--the countess had him buried in the church of the Templars, while she herself took the veil.
But if there is moonshine madness in the ideals of chivalry, there are also better things. Devotion to woman rises to the point of adoration; why should it not, when at its base is really the fervor of worship, the mystic worship of her whom the Middle Ages delighted to honor, Mary, the Mother of God? Let us content ourselves here with what Lecky has so well said in his History of European Morals: "Whatever may be thought of its theological propriety, there can be little doubt that the Catholic reverence for the Virgin has done much to elevate and purify the ideal of woman, and to soften the manners of men. It has had an influence which the worship of the Pagan goddesses could never possess, for these had been almost destitute of moral beauty, and especially of that kind of moral beauty which is peculiarly feminine. It supplied in a great measure the redeeming and ennobling element in that strange amalgam of religious, licentious, and military feeling which was formed around women in the age of chivalry, and which no succeeding change of habit or belief has wholly destroyed."
The fact that this love of the Virgin finally became a recognized force is a proof of how much stronger are love and romance than theology and dogma; for the strict religious theory of the Church had always been opposed to the elevation of women to a very high plane of adoration. While the Fathers of the Church praised and practised chastity as the highest virtue, and in consequence honored virgins above all others, they never forgot that it was the sin of woman which had "brought death into the world and all our woe"; they never forgot to twit the daughters of Eve with this fact, and to call them vas infirmius--"the weaker vessel." All through the ages when Christianity was struggling to maintain its own, the saints and martyrs, the holy hermits, in whom the Church delighted, fled the very sight of woman, and shuddered at her touch as at a contamination. Yet, in spite of this, or along with this, there was growing the adoration of a woman, the mother of Him whom the world called the Son of God. Little was known about her; so much the better for the pious hagiologists, who thought they did no wrong in piecing out scant fact with abundant legend. A regular cult of the Virgin arose, reaching such proportions that the Church had to do something to recognize it. Numerous festivals were established in her honor, some with the sanction of the Church, some without that sanction, some celebrated throughout Christendom, some only locally: the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Purification, the Assumption.
The mystic worship, the tendency to find hidden meanings in things of the most ordinary appearance to the lay eye, the extravagant symbolism, were at their height in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The scholastic theologians and sermon writers applied their fantastic methods to all phases of the religious life; so we must not be surprised to find them treating even the Virgin in this way. One of the extraordinary instances which we can give occurs in a sermon delivered in Paris by the Chancellor of the university, Stephen Langton, later Archbishop of Canterbury. His name, by the way, is Latinized for us as Stephanus de Langeduna, whence it was easy and flattering to deduce Stephanus Linguæ tonantis. As a text the preacher takes nothing more nor less than a popular song, Bele Aalis main se leva, of which the following is the sense: "Sweet Alice arose in the early morn, dressed herself and adorned her fair body, and went into the garden. There she found five flowrets, of which she made a chaplet covered with roses. By my faith, therein has she betrayed thee, thou who lovest not." It is a little love song; and the author, whoever he may be,--probably some forgotten strolling minstrel who saw the girl go into the garden and wrought the incident to suit his fancy,--certainly had no religious intent. But Stephen Langton endeavors to make a mystic application of the song to the Virgin, and, as he says, "thus to turn evil into good." Let me quote a few lines of the sermon to show how this tour de force was accomplished. "Videamus quæ sit Bele Aeliz.... Cele est bele Aeliz de qua sic dicitur: Speciosa ut gemma splendida ut luna et clara ut sol, rutilans quasi Lucifer inter sidera, etc.... Hoc nomen Aeliz dicitur ab a quod est sine et lis litis, quasi sine lite, sine reprehensione, sine mundana fæce." It may be of interest to translate this as a specimen of the sermon of the first quarter of the thirteenth century: "Let us now see who is Bele Aeliz.... She is bele Aeliz of whom it is said: Beautiful as a jewel, shining as the moon and brilliant as the sun, glistening as Lucifer among the stars, etc.... This name Aeliz is formed from a, which means without, and lis, litis, which is as much as to say without dispute, without blame, without mixture of the dregs of the world." The worthy theologian then proceeds to what is undoubtedly the most difficult problem of his interpretation to demonstrate the connection of the garden, the chaplet, and the five flowers with the Virgin. "Who are these flowers? Faith, hope, charity, humility, virginity. These flowers did the Holy Ghost find in the blessed Virgin Mary..." The closing verses are, he says, directed against pagans, heretics, blasphemers, whom he scripturally addresses thus: "Depart, ye accursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels."
The enthusiasm of the clergy in behalf of the Virgin was matched by that of the people. Nothing was more popular than the hymn to the Virgin, scarcely distinguishable, in the ardor of some specimens preserved to us, from the contemporary love songs to women of flesh and blood. Clerks and laymen composed these songs, vying with each other in the fervor of the sentiments they expressed, writing in Latin, in French, in mixed Latin and French, praising the mere physical beauty and grace of her whom they called rose des roses et fleur des fleurs. One can read these things without shock only when one remembers that there was nothing but devotion of a purely spiritual kind intended by them, a fact of which it is sometimes hard to persuade oneself. As an example, and not an extreme one, it might do to substitute merely the name Marie for that of Aalis in the song used for Langton's sermon.
Besides these songs there were plays representing miracles ascribed to the Virgin, and legends without end grew up in which she was the intercessor for poor mortality. She becomes almost identified with the attribute of Mercy assigned to the Godhead, and some of the souls alleged to have been saved by her are not always worth the saving, according to modern standards of morality. A legend, repeated in many forms, tells us, for example, of a clerk of Chartres (presumably a clerk in the cathedral), "proud, vain, rude, and so worldly and licentious in his habits that he could not be restrained." With all his rakish ways, however, there was one thing that this man of God never omitted to do: "He would never pass before the image of Our Lady... without kneeling;" and once on his knees, "his face wet with tears, he saluted her many times most humbly, and beat his breast." Now the clerk was killed by an enemy of his, and then the world began to speak ill of him, and, on account of his notorious bad habits, they buried his body in a ditch outside Chartres. Thirty days, or nights, afterward, "she from whom springs all pity, all mildness and sweetness and love, and who never forgets her servants," appeared in a dream to one of the other clerks and reproached him bitterly for the dishonor done her servitor, of whose piety she then told him. The clergy of the city marched out to the grave of the clerk; and when it was opened they found "a flower in his mouth, so fresh and full of bloom that it seemed as if it had just blown there"; while the tongue with which he used to praise the Virgin was preserved from corruption, "as clear as is a rose in May." The moral of this story, one would think, would be anything but salutary; it is only when one recognizes the simple, unsophisticated piety which inspired it, and reflects upon its teaching of greater gentleness, greater charity in judging others, that one can admire it.
To the mediaeval mind, indeed, the Virgin was not very unlike a heroine of romance, and it was no disrespect to deck her out in fancy as gorgeously as some fair Elaine or Iseut. The story of this latter heroine, whose name no two will spell alike,--Iseut, Ysoult, Isolde, Isout, Ysolt,--is one typical of the age of romance and chivalry, and one which we shall give, despite its familiarity. By way of preface it may be well to remark that the story has been told so often that the variations introduced by this or that reviser are not to be distinguished from the original.
The mother of Tristan was Isabelle, sister of King Mark of Cornwall, who, dying when her son was born, asked that he be called Tristan, or Tristram, "that is as much as to say, sorrowful birth." The boy was hated by his uncle, King Mark, who tried to make away with him; but the youth escaped to France, where he won the love of King Faramond's daughter, and was in consequence compelled to flee again to Cornwall, where a temporary reconciliation with Mark was effected. Then there came out of Ireland a knight, Sir Morhoult, to claim tribute due to the Irish king by King Mark. Tristan fought with the stranger, wounded him unto death, and was himself wounded by the poisoned lance of his adversary. Only in the country where the poison was brewed was there hope of succor for the wounded hero; and accordingly Tristan set out for Ireland, in a boat without sails and without rudder, albeit well victualled. The helpless boat, however, bore its precious burden safely to Ireland.
The wounded knight, who concealed his real name, was kindly received by the Irish king, who gave him into the charge of his wife and his daughter, La Belle Iseut, both skilled leeches. The latter, fair and golden-haired, altogether lovely, became the special attendant of the wounded knight: "And when she had searched his wound, she found in the bottom of his wound that there was poison, and within a little while she healed him, and therefore Tristan cast great love to la Belle Iseut, for she was at that time the fairest lady in the world, and then Sir Tristan taught her to harp, and she began to have a great fantasy unto Sir Tristan." Unfortunately the mother of Iseut discovered by chance that Tristan was the slayer of her brother, Sir Morhoult. Tristan must leave, and nothing but the love of Iseut and the honor of the king saved him from the wrath of the queen and enabled him to escape unmolested.
For long years we hear no more of la Belle Iseut in Tristan's life, which is wholly devoted to winning himself a place at the Round Table and putting to shame his wicked uncle, King Mark. But he had never forgotten Iseut, and praised her so enthusiastically that King Mark conceived a desire to have her for his wife. Tristan, despatched to Ireland to fetch Iseut to be his uncle's bride, was kindly received on account of his honorable mission, and of the great renown he had won. He made a formal demand for the princess: "I desire that ye will give me la Belle Iseut, your daughter, not for myself, but for mine uncle King Mark, that shall have her to wife, for so have I promised him." "Alas," said the king, "I had liever than all the land that I have ye would wed her yourself." "Sir, an I did, then were I shamed for ever in this world, and false of my promise."
All was made ready for the voyage, and la Belle Iseut was committed to the care of Tristan: "a fairer couple or one more meet for marriage had no man seen." She was accompanied into the strange land by her gentlewoman, dame Brangian, to whom the Queen of Ireland had given a powerful love philtre to be administered to the husband and wife on the wedding day: whoso drank of that philtre with another, should love that other with a love that knows no ending. By a fatal error, it was to Tristan and Iseut that the philtre was given during the voyage; and from that time an invincible passion drew them toward each other. Love so overmastered Tristan that he was false to his knightly vows, false to the trust imposed, and yet happy in his guilty love for the betrothed of King Mark. And Iseut returned his love, and moaned at the thought of Mark.
When they reached the court of Cornwall some stratagem must be devised to prevent the King from discovering that his bride had been unfaithful; but it is always easy for the romancer to extricate himself from entanglements that seem to the ordinary mind hopelessly involved, and the solution generally suggests fresh complications. In this case it was arranged that the lady-in-waiting, Brangian, should personate the bride at night, trusting that King Mark, fuddled with wine and sleep, would not discover the fraud. The scheme was entirely successful; King Mark suspected no wrong. But la Belle Iseut, that gentle lady whom all loved, determined to leave no witness to the shame of herself and Tristan, hired two murderers to slay the faithful Brangian! More pitiful than Iseut, the murderers were smitten with compassion and merely carried off their victim and left her bound fast to a tree, from which she was rescued by the gallant Saracen knight, Sir Palamedes. Palamedes, indeed, was also one of Iseut's lovers, and had loved her in Ireland before she met Tristan. But Iseut scorned him now as she had scorned him then: her whole heart was given to Tristan, for Tristan was a knight of greater prowess than he. Iseut loved Tristan, and not her husband; the husband at length grew suspicious, and the lover was forced to flee for his life.
Many adventures befell him, but his heart was still with la Belle Iseut. Wounded once more by a poisoned arrow, he could no longer return to Iseut to be cured, and bethought him of his cousin, Iseut de la Blanche Main, a lady skilled in surgery, who lived in Brittany. To Iseut of the White Hand, then, went Tristan, and a new and most curious episode in the love story began. For the new Iseut cured Tristan, but fell in love with him, and loved him passionately. He could not return her love, for he had not forgotten la Belle Iseut, but out of gratitude he married her; and Iseut of the White Hand, not knowing that she had not all her husband's love, was happy in what she had.
Tristan made a confidant of his wife's brother, Peredor, telling him such marvels of the beauty of la Belle Iseut that Peredor was half in love by hearsay, and quite in love when he and Tristan journeyed into Cornwall and saw the lady. She seemed for a moment flattered by the new love, and played the coquette till Tristan, driven to madness, wandered off into the forest; and the heart of Iseut was sad and sick of longing and regret. Here he dwelt, till one day he was captured by King Mark, who failed to recognize his nephew in the naked madman, and confined him within the high walled garden. But la Belle Iseut came forth to see the man, and Tristan, knowing her even in his madness, turned away his head and wept. Then a little dog that Iseut had always with her, smelt Tristan, and knew him, and leapt upon him; for this dog had Iseut kept by her every day since Tristan gave her to Iseut in the first days of their love. And thereupon Iseut fell down in a swoon, and so lay a great while; and when she might speak, she said: "My lord Sir Tristan, blessed be God ye have your life! And now I am sure you shall be discovered by this little dog, for she will never leave you; and also I am sure that as soon as my lord King Mark shall know you he will banish you out of the country of Cornwall or else he will destroy you. For God's sake, mine own lord, grant King Mark his will, and then draw you unto the court of King Arthur, for there are ye beloved."
King Mark banished Tristan forever, and to the court of King Arthur went Tristan, winning there ever fresh fame, until finally King Mark himself, moved by jealousy and envy, came to destroy Tristan. But the good Arthur reconciled uncle and nephew, and Tristan went to free Cornwall from a horde of invading Saxons. The intrigue with Iseut was renewed, and Mark confined Tristan in a dungeon, whence he was released only by an insurrection of Mark's oppressed subjects. Iseut eloped with him, and the two wandered in the forest like true lovers, this fair lady and her bold knight, and were finally received at Joyeuse Garde by the gallant Lancelot, where they dwelt till a fresh reconciliation with King Mark brought about the restoration of Iseut to her husband.
We must not forget the other Iseut, the white-handed lady whom Tristan married and left behind in Brittany. The fact of her existence came again to his recollection now, and he returned to her. She was in dire distress and longing for her husband; but from her caressing arms he fled again to put down a rebellion in his dominions. Once more sorely wounded, once more he was cured by the white hands of his wife, whom he nevertheless soon afterward abandoned to renew the intrigue with the rival Iseut in Cornwall. But he was again discovered and put to flight by the jealous husband. The spirit of restlessness would not let him be quiet with his wife, the knight must be up and doing; and while he engaged in a reckless adventure he was grievously wounded, so grievously that death seemed nigh and not to be put off by the ministrations of Iseut of the White Hand. Tristan sent a messenger in haste for la Belle Iseut: "Come with all speed, if you love me! And that I may know you are on the ship let the sails be white; if you cannot come, let the sails be black." Iseut hastened toward her lover, with feverish impatience, blaming winds and waves and slow messengers. Meanwhile, the neglected wife, Iseut of the White Hand, discovered the truth and grew wildly jealous. Tristan lay on his bed in agony, waiting for news of the ship bearing la Belle Iseut. The jealous wife, too, kept watch, and when the white sails of the vessel told her that her rival was coming, was almost at hand, jealousy got the mastery: "I see the ship," she cried to Tristan. "What color are her sails?" asked he. "Black, all black," she cried. The sick knight fell back upon his bed, moaning out reproaches upon the Iseut who had forsaken him in his need:
"Amie Yoslt! treis fez a dit,
A la quarte rent l'esperit."
(Iseut, my love! three times he cried, at the fourth he rendered up his soul.)
"Iseut is come out of the ship; in the street she hears the lamentations.... An old woman told her: 'Lovely lady, so help me God, we have here a sorrow greater than men ever had before: Tristan li pruz, li francs, est mort (Tristan the brave and noble is dead).'... All dishevelled went Iseut through the streets and into the palace where the body lay. Then she turned her to the east and prayed for him pitifully: 'Tristan, my love, when I see you lie dead, I should live no longer. You are dead because of my love, and I die, ami, of grief because I could not come in time.' Then she lay herself beside him, embraced him,... and in that same moment yielded up her spirit."
The reader will note almost at once the similarity of this tale to one famous in Greek legend, that of Theseus and the Minotaur; and there are several details, necessarily omitted in the summary we have given, which tend to make this similarity still more marked. But the matter in which we are more interested is the character of the heroine. One might remark that there are certain features in la Belle Iseut not very unlike those of Andromeda, so readily consoled by Dionysius. The lady Iseut is a typical heroine of the romances, and as such we may comment upon those of her characteristics which seem most noteworthy.
The love motive of the romance is, to begin with, as strong as the motive of pure adventure; it is, indeed, the love story which serves as the thread to bind the whole together. This shows a marked change in the importance of women in the eyes of those who wrote to please the world. But the relations of the heroine to the hero are most amazing. Not only is Iseut very forward, more than ready to confess her love and to give full response to that of Tristan, but she is all this with the full consciousness that she is doing wrong. The poet, realizing that the moral of his story might be brought in question, the love potion: being under the spell of enchantment the lovers are not responsible.
Whether we shall acquit the lovers at the bar of romantic justice or not, we cannot forget that their entire story is based upon guilty passion, which seems to have a peculiar fascination for the romancer: it is the same, to cite but one example out of the many that could be adduced, in the story of Lancelot and Guinever, with the episode of Elaine. To be sure, in both cases we have mentioned, the highest honor is denied the hero: it is not for the guilty Tristan, false to his knightly oath, nor yet for the chivalrous but guilty Lancelot to win the Holy Grail; and we are not teft in doubt, we are told that only the pure in life could win that honor. And then for Iseut, though she is fair and much beloved, there is a pathetic end, an end that brings no crowning happiness, no reward; but punishment.
One trait in the character of Iseut is disconcerting to those who cherish romantic ideals: her cruelty. We could forgive her the love for Tristan, and we learn to feel for her, as we read the romance, some part of the passion that instilled itself into Tristan's veins with the love draught; but what shall we say when she deliberately plans the murder of a defenceless woman, and one who had performed service unexampled in its fidelity and sacrifice?
If Iseut represented the poetic ideal in the age of chivalry, was the real woman of that age like Iseut? We can answer, unhesitatingly, no. The conditions of life in the romances were very highly idealized, and certain forms in the romance became purely conventional. The heroine must always be more beautiful than tongue can tell, and she must, in the end, win her lover, or be merciful to him, according as she began in disdain or in love sickness. Numerous adventures, wildly fantastic in character, preceded this consummation; but readers even in that day got to such a point that their jaded palates could no longer be tickled even by the choicest extravagances. Men knew that in real life they did not love in that way; and women knew it, too, though they were perhaps slower to confess it. At any rate, the reaction from the extreme type of romantic idealization of woman began even while the romance of chivalry was trying to persuade its readers that all women were like Iseut, Guinever, Elaine, and that these were angels.
The reaction against the ideal of chivalry in literature took two main directions, the one, more purely comic or realistic, representing the woman of the middle classes, the other, more intellectual and satiric, representing woman in general but especially the lady. The first is represented, we may say, by the great Roman du Renard and those short popular tales which strolling minstrels were wont to recite, the Fabliaux. The second we find chiefly in the Roman de la Rose and its numerous progeny.
Renard is, of course, the central personage in the gigantic beast epic, but we hear not a little of his wife Hermeline or Erme, of madam wolf, Dame Hersent, and of Harouge, the leopardess. They play before us a little game, which we know is the game of life as women lived it in the days when Renard was still a famous personage. To give but one episode, from Renard le Nouveau, by Jacquemart Gelée, end of the thirteenth century, Renard becomes the confidant of Noble (the lion), and learns of his amour with Dame Harouge; forthwith the subtle Renard begins to intrigue, until at last Harouge becomes his mistress. Besieged in Maupertuis by Noble, Renard sends a flattering love letter to each of his old flames, the lioness, the wolf, and the leopardess. The three ladies are delighted with the proposals of the charming Maitre Renard. They draw lots to see which shall possess forever the affections of the irresistible Lothario; the lot falls to Dame Hersent, and the three ladies write a joint letter to inform Renard of their choice, a choice not very pleasing to Renard, who is, moreover, provoked because they have exchanged confidences. His revenge is at once planned. Going to court dressed as a charlatan, he gives to Noble a precious talisman by means of which, he says, any deceived husband can learn of his wife's infidelities; and Noble, Isengrin (the wolf), and the leopard are eager to test the virtues of the talisman. The ensuing dreadful revelations may be imagined. The guilty wives, well beaten by their wrathful husbands, flee from the court and are kindly received by crafty Renard, who forthwith establishes a harem. It is a pleasantly humorous story, and the conditions of real life are distinctly reflected, while the satiric intent is not enough to distort the reflection.
In the Fabliaux, however, woman is even more clearly portrayed as she really was, or at least as she seemed to the men. A large part of Old French literature, as one critic has remarked, is devoted to exposing and discussing, the misfortunes of marriage; and in these relations the deceived husband is, we might say, clown paramount. The authors of the Fabliaux--which were written to amuse the bourgeois as well as the knight--"invented or discovered anew talismans that revealed their misfortunes (as husbands): the enchanted mantle which grows either longer or shorter suddenly when put on by an unfaithful wife, the cup from which none but happy husbands can drink.... Our tellers of tales invented a whole cycle of feminine tricks and ruses.... The women of the Fabliaux shrink from no stratagem: they can persuade their husbands, one that he is covered by an invisible cloak, another that he is a monk, or a third that he is dead." Contending with them or seeking to outwit them is of no avail, says the author of these tales, for mout se femme de renardise,--many a foxy trick does woman know,--and fols est qui femme espie et guette,--he is a fool who spies upon a woman.
The story of one of these triumphs of beauty over wisdom will illustrate the best type of the Fabliaux; it is called the Lai d'Aristote. When Alexander had conquered India, he rested in shameful sloth, a slave to love for a young Hindoo princess. Aristotle, master of all wisdom, reproved his quondam pupil for this neglect of grave matters; and the Hindoo girl, perceiving Alexander's unhappy frame of mind, discovered what had produced it. She will be revenged on the crabbed old scholar; ere noon of the next day she will make him forget grammar and logic, if Alexander will only allow her free scope, and he shall see Aristotle's defeat if he will watch from a window opening on the garden. In the early morn, while the dew was on the grass and the birds were just beginning to sing, she tripped out into the garden, her corsage loosely fastened, her golden hair waving wildly down her neck; and as she picked her way hither and thither among the flowers, her petticoat daintily lifted, she sang sweet little songs of love. Master Aristotle, at his books, heard the singer, and "such a sweet memory she stirred in his heart that he shut his book." "Alas," he said, "what is the matter with my heart? Here am I, old and bald, pale and thin, and a philosopher more sour than any yet known or heard of." The damsel gathered flowers and wove a garland for herself, singing the while so sweetly, so enticingly, that the sour philosopher gave way, opened his window, and talked to her, nay, came out to her and courted her like a very lover, offering to risk for her sake body and soul. She asked not so much by way of proof of his devotion. "It is merely a little whim of mine," she said, "if you will gratify me in that, I might love you." The whim is, that he should let her ride about the garden on his back. "And you must have a saddle on: I shall go more gracefully." Love won the day, and there was the foremost scholar in the world prancing about on all fours like a colt, with a saucy girl on his back, when Alexander appeared at the window. The pedagogue was not dismayed; with the saddle and bridle upon him, he looked up at the king: "Sire, tell me if I was not right to fear love for you, in all the ardor of youth, since love has harnessed me thus, I who am old and withered! I have combined precept and example: it is for you to profit by them."
Sometimes the poet of the Fabliau pauses to describe his heroine and her costume; now it is a lively country maiden, barefooted, with her clothes all wet from the armful of water-cress she has gathered; now it is a coquette finishing her toilette before the mirror, which she makes a little page hold while she binds up her tresses and flirts with him; and now it is a party of ladies seated in some castle bower, embroidering heraldic devices on the banners of their knights. Then there is a jolly story of three commères of Paris, the wife of Adam de Gonesse, her niece Marie Clipe, and Dame Tifaigne, milliner, who tell their husbands that they are going on a pilgrimage, oh! a pious pilgrimage, on the feast of the Three Kings of Cologne. They evade their watchful but too credulous spouses, and here they are seated at an inn table, where one gets "as good wine as ever grew; it is health itself; 'tis a wine clear, sparkling, strong, fine, fresh, soft to the tongue, and sweet and pleasant to swallow." The good cheer begins with much eating of fat goose, fritters, onions, cheese, almonds, pears, and nuts, while the trio joins in singing:
"Commères, menons bon revel!
Tels vilains l'escot paiera
Qui ja du vin n'ensaiera."
(Gossips, let's revel and frolic to our heart's content! The poor devil who has never put away wine will pay the score.) And then, the meal over, they come "out of the tavern into the street," not a little exhilarated, one may fancy, by this famous wine, and away they go singing to the fair.
Not all the pictures of women are as innocently amusing or mirthful as this one; on the contrary, the general attitude of the authors of the Fabliaux is distinctly unflattering, not to say hostile. Sometimes it is merely one of the infinite variations on the idea of the scarcity of virtuous wives; it is Chicheface, the cow who feeds on virtuous wives, and who is all but starved to death, while Bigorne, with less rigorous ideas as to the morals of her food, is choked, fit to burst. But in general the notion prevails, as one writer himself puts it, that "woman is of too feeble intellect; she laughs at nothing, she cries at nothing; she will turn from love to hate in a moment. The strong hand alone can control her; and yet, beating is useless, for her faults are inherent; nature made her captious, obstinate, perverse; she is an inferior creature, by nature degraded and vicious."
But slightly different from this is the sentiment of the Roman de la Rose, when we take this huge work in its complete and most influential form. The Roman de la Rose, to rehearse a few well-known facts, was composed between 1225 and 1275 by two poets, one writing later than the other and under somewhat different inspiration. The story is allegorical, and its main thread has to do with the adventures of a young man, at once the hero and the poet, in his attempt to pluck a beautiful rose, which he finds hedged about with thorns in a garden full of marvels. In his attempts to reach the rose the lover is alternately aided and hindered by various allegorical personages, whose names suggest the part they play, such as Kindly Greeting and Modesty and Vanity and Pity. To the poet who first undertook the telling of this marvellous allegory, Guillaume de Lorris, woman is a superior being, almost an angel; and love is a divine thing. Love is the theme of his poem: