so, perhaps, than in the wild chivalry of North America, when first its
painted heroes heard of the passion and death of Christ. Charlevoix
tells us of an Iroquois, who, on hearing of the crucifixion, exclaimed
with the feeling of a Christian crusader, “Oh, if I had been there!”
Precisely such an exclamation was once made by a Norman knight, as he
listened to a monk narrating the great sacrifice on Mount Calvary. The
more savage warrior, however, has always had the more poetical feeling.
Witness the dying request of a young Indian chief, also noticed by
Charlevoix. The dying victor asked to be buried in a blue robe, because
that was the color of the sky: the fashion, with many Norman knights,
of being interred in a robe and cowl of a monk, had far less of
elevated feeling for its motive.
Having shown something of what the knight did at home, let us
contemplate also what he taught there, by precept, if not by example.
There was a knight who was known by the title of “the White Knight,”
whose name was De la Tour Landay, who was a contemporary of Edward the
Black Prince, and who is supposed to have fought at Poictiers. He, is,
however, best known, or at least equally well known, as the author
of a work entitled “Le Livre du Chevalier de la Tour Landay.” This
book was written, or dictated by him, for the especial benefit of his
two daughters, and for the guidance of young ladies generally. It is
extremely indelicate in parts, and in such wise gives no very favorable
idea of the young ladies who could bear such instruction as is here
imparted. The Chevalier performed his authorship after a very free and
easy fashion. He engaged four clerical gentlemen, strictly designated
as “two priests and two clerks,” whose task it was to procure for
him all the necessary illustrative materials, such as anecdotes,
apophthegms, and such like. These were collected from all sources,
sacred and profane--from the Bible down to any volume, legendary or
historical, that would suit his purpose. These he worked mosaically
together, adding such wise saw, moral, counsel, or sentiment, as
he deemed the case most especially required;--with a sprinkling of
stories of his own collecting. A critic in the “Athenæum,” commenting
upon this curious volume, says with great truth, that it affords good
materials for an examination into the morals and manners of the times.
“Nothing,” says the reviewer, “is urged for adoption upon the sensible
grounds of right or wrong, or as being in accordance with any admitted
moral standard, but because it has been sanctified by long usage, been
confirmed by pretended miracle, or been approved by some superstition
which outrages common sense.”
In illustration of these remarks it is shown how the Chevalier
recommends a strict observation of the meagre days, upon the ground
that the dissevered head of a soldier was once enabled to call for a
priest, confess, and listen to the absolution, because the owner of the
head had never transgressed the Wednesday and Friday’s fasts throughout
his lifetime. Avoidance of the seven capital sins is enjoined upon
much the same grounds. Gluttony, for instance, is to be avoided, for
the good reason, that a prattling magpie once betrayed a lady who had
eaten a dish of eels, which her lord had intended for some guests whom
he wished particularly to honor. Charity is enjoined, not because the
practice thereof is placed by the great teacher, not merely above Hope,
but before Faith, but because a lady who, in spite of priestly warning,
gave the broken victuals of her household to her dogs rather than to
the poor, being on her death-bed, was leaped upon by a couple of black
dogs, and that these having approached her lips, the latter became as
black as a coal. The knight the more insists upon the proper exercise
of charity, seeing that he has unquestionable authority in support
of the truth of the story. That is, he knew a lady that had known
the defunct, and who said she had seen the dogs. Implicit obedience
of wives to husbands is insisted on, with a forcibly illustrative
argument. A burgher’s wife had answered her lord sharply, in place of
silently listening to reproof, and meekly obeying his command. The
husband, thereupon, dealt his wife a blow with his clenched fist,
which smashed her nose, and felled her to the ground. “It is reason
and right,” says the mailed Mrs. Ellis of his time, “that the husband
should have the word of command, and it is an honor to the good wife
to hear him, and hold her peace, and leave all high talking to her
lord; and so, on the contrary, it is a great shame to hear a woman
strive with her husband, _whether right or wrong_, and especially
before other people.” Publius Syrus says, that a good wife commands by
obeying, but the Chevalier evidently had no idea of illustrating the
Latin maxim, or recommending the end which it contemplates. The knight
places the husband as absolute lord; and his doing so, in conjunction
with the servility which he demands on the part of the wife, reminds
me of the saying of Toulotte, which is as true as anything enjoined
by the moralizing knight, namely, that “_L’obéissance aux volontés
d’un chef absolu assimile l’homme à la brute_.” This, with a verbal
alteration, may be applied as expressive of the effect of the knight’s
teaching in the matter of feminine obedience. The latter is indeed in
consonance with the old heathen ideas. Euripides asserts, that the most
intolerable wife in the world is a wife who philosophizes, or supports
her own opinion. We are astonished to find a Christian knight thus
agreed with a heathen poet--particularly as it was in Christian times
that the maxim was first published, which says, “_Ce que femme veut,
Dieu le veut!_”
This sentiment reminds me, that it is time to show how the knight was
affected by the tender passion, how it was sometimes his glory and
sometimes his shame. He was sometimes the victim, and at others the
victimizer.
LOVE IN CHEVALIERS, AND CHEVALIERS IN LOVE.
“How pleasing are the steps we lovers make,
When in the paths of our content we pace
To meet our longings!”--_The Hog hath Lost his Purse._
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:--
“Won all their ladies’ hearts in fights,
And cuts whole giants into fritters,
To put them into amorous twitters;
Whose stubborn bowels scorned to yield,
Until their gallants were half killed:
But when their bones were drubbed so sore
They durst not win one combat more,
The ladies’ hearts began to melt,
Subdued by blows their lovers felt.
So Spanish heroes with their lances
At once wound bulls and ladies’ fancies.”
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.