Garden.
If Baron Conon has been fortunate enough to receive a noble guest,
almost the first question is how to divert the stranger. The inevitable
program will be to constrain the visitor to tarry at least long enough
to cast hawks or to chase down a deer. If that is not possible, at
least he will be courteously urged to attempt some game, and it will be
most "ungentle" of him to refuse.
Indoor games are in great demand where bad weather often makes open
sports impossible and where bookish diversions are limited. The baron
frequently plays with his own family when there are no outside guests,
and all the household are more or less expert. To understand them is
part of a gentle education for both sexes. Indeed, there is no better
way for a noble dame and a cavalier to begin a romance than to sit
through a long afternoon studying one another's faces no less than the
gaming table.
Some of these diversions are decidedly like those of a later age. For
example, if all present are reasonably literate they can play "ragman's
roll"! Burlesque verses--some suitable for men, some for women, and all
often deplorably coarse--are written on slips of parchment wound in a
roll. On each slip is a string with some sign showing for which sex it
is intended. Everybody has to draw a roll, then open and read it aloud
to the mirthful company. The verses are supposed to show the character
of the person drawing the same. Also, even grown-up folk are not above
"run around" games which are later reserved for children. High barons
play blind-man's buff; seigneurs and dames sometimes join in the
undignified "hot cockles." A blindfolded player kneels with his face
on the knee of another and with his hands held out behind him. Other
players in turn strike him on the hand, and he tries to guess who has
hit him. If he is correct, the person last striking takes his place.
Of course, a large part of the sport is to deliver very shrewd blows.
The fact that such a game can be in vogue shows again that even the
high and mighty are often like hot-blooded children abounding in animal
spirits.
These games Conon will not press upon his guests. He will urge on them
backgammon, checkers, chess or, if they seem young and secular, perhaps
dice. Backgammon is called "tables." It is a combination of dice
playing plus the motion of pieces on a board which goes back to Roman
times. The boards and methods of play are so like those of a later age
that one need not comment thereon.
Backgammon is a popular diversion, but hardly more so than checkers
(Anglice "draughts") known in France as "dames." Here also is a game
that hardly changes essentially from age to age. The checkermen at St.
Aliquis are square, not round. Otherwise, no explanation is needed.
[Sidenote: Backgammon, Checkers and Dice]
What men like Conon really enjoy, however, are games of dice.
Nevertheless, since the Church has often censured these cubes of ivory,
he and his baroness do not dare to use them too often; besides, they
realize the havoc often wrought among the young by dice throwing,
and wish to keep their own sons from temptation. In parts of France
there are laws reading: "Dice shall not be made in this dominion, and
those using them shall be looked upon as suspicious characters."[14]
All such enactments are usually dead letters, and a high justiciar
can ordinarily punish merely the manufacture and use of loaded dice.
Although church prelates rail vigorously, their complaints are not
merely that games of chance are, _ipso facto_, sinful, but that the
blasphemies constantly uttered by losing dice players form a means of
populating hell.
Dice playing assuredly is extremely common. It is even impiously
called "the game of God," because the regulation of chance belongs
to Providence. Did not the Holy Apostles cast lots between Justus
and Matthias to select a successor to the wicked Judas; and can good
Christians question means acceptable to St. John and St. Peter? So
gamesters will quiet their consciences. Vainly does King Philip
Augustus command that any person swearing over dice in his royal
presence, no matter how high his rank, shall be cast into the river.
Dice are everywhere--in the travelers' and pilgrims' wallets and in
almost every castle, hut, or town dwelling. Let any three or four men
come together for an idle hour and fortunate it is if a set of dice
does not appear to while away the time. The thirteenth century is
innocent of cards; dice form the substitute.
The swearing is evil, but the gambling is worse. There are at least
ten gambling games, some with three dice, some needing six. Adela has
been warning François, her eldest son, concerning a recent instance of
reckless playing. A young squire, whose father held lands of Conon,
set forth to seek his fortune at the king's court. He halted at
Pontdebois, where he met an older soldier of fortune at the tavern. The
poor young man was induced "to try a few casts." Soon he had lost his
travel money; next his horse; next his armor. In desperation he began
pledging his ordinary vesture to the tavern keeper (who acted as a kind
of pawnbroker). Ill luck still pursued, and he was reduced to his bare
shirt[15] before a friend of his father's, chancing about the inn,
recovered his necessary clothes between them and sent him home, utterly
humiliated. Such calamities are constant. Dice are daily the ruin of
countless nobles and villeins--but the accursed gaming continues. It is
even rumored that in certain disorderly monasteries these tools of the
devil often intrude further to demoralize the brethren.
[Illustration: THE GAME OF CHESS
An ivory plaque of the fourteenth century (Musée du Louvre).]
[Sidenote: Chess in Great Esteem]
No such ill odor, however, attends that game in which Conon delights
most. To play at chess is part of an aristocratic education. In a
jongleur's romance we hear of a young prince who was brought up "first
to know his letters," and then "to play at tables (backgammon), and
at chess; and soon he learned these games so well that no man in this
world could 'mate' him." François and Anseau, the baron's sons, make
no such boasts, but both know the moves, and François takes great
pride in having lately forced a visiting knight to a stalemate. Great
seigneurs and kings carry chessboards around with them on campaigns
and are said to amuse themselves with chess problems immediately
before or after desperate battles. Plenty of other anecdotes tell of
short-tempered nobles who lost self-control when checkmated, broke the
chessboards over their opponents' heads, and ended the contest in a
regular brawl.
This royal game has doubtless come from the Orient. Caliphs of the
Infidels have long since boasted their skill in taking rooks and
pawns, but in western lands about the first record comes from the time
of Pope Alexander II (1061-73), to whom complaint was made that a
bishop of Florence was "spending his evenings in the vanity of chess
playing." The bishop's enemies alleged that this was forbidden by
the canons prohibiting dice. But the bishop retorted that "dice and
chess were entirely different things: the first sinful; the second a
most honorable exercise for Christians." The Pope tactfully refrained
from pressing the matter. Nevertheless, austere churchmen regarded
the game as worldly, and impetuous religious reformers insisted on
confounding it with games of chance. It was only in 1212 that a Council
of Paris forbade French clerics to play chess, just as it (for about
the thousandth time) forbade dice--despite which fact the Bishop of
Pontdebois spent a whole afternoon over the chessboard the last time he
visited the castle and could test his skill on the baron.
As for the nobility, no one thinks of refusing to play, although
naturally it is the older knights who have the patience for long
contests. According to the _Song of Roland_, after Charlemagne's host
had taken Cordova the Emperor and all his knights rested themselves
in a shady garden. The more sedate leaders immediately played chess,
although the younger champions selected the more exciting backgammon.
The chessmen are often made of whalebone and imported from Scandinavia.
They are models of warriors. The kings have their swords drawn; the
knights are on horseback; in place of castles we have "warders," a
kind of infantrymen; the bishops hold their croziers; and the queens
upbear drinking horns like the great ladies in a northern house. Conon,
however, has a fine ivory set made in the East; and Oriental models
differ from the Norse. The Infidels, of course, have no bishops;
instead there is a _phil_--a carved elephant; and since Moslems despise
women, instead of a queen there is a _phrez_, or counselor. Chessboards
are usually made of inlaid woods, or even metals, and Conon has an
elegant one with squares of silver and gilt, the gift of a count whose
life he once saved in battle.
Needless to say, chess is a game in which the women can excel. Alienor
is well able to defeat her brother, despite his boasting; and among the
duties of the ladies of a castle is to teach the young squires who are
being "nourished" by its lord how to say "check."
Chess is supposed to be a game of such worth and intricacy as not to
need the stimulus of wagering. But, alas! such is the old Adam in
mankind that scandalous gambling often goes on around a chessboard.
At festivals when nobles assemble, if two distinguished players match
their skill, there is soon an excited, if decently silent, crowd around
their table. Soon one spectator after another in whispers places wagers
to support a contestant; the players themselves begin to bet on their
own skill. The final result may leave them almost as poverty-stricken
as the dicers in the tavern, as well as compromising salvation by awful
oaths.
[Illustration: A GAME OF BALL (STRUTT)]
Young nobles also kill much time with out-of-door games resembling
tennis and billiards. The tennis is played without rackets, by merely
striking the ball with the open hand. The billiards require no tables,
but are played on level ground with wooden balls struck with hooked
sticks or mallets, somewhat resembling the hockey of another age. Here
again reckless youths often wager and lose great sums. Lads and young
maidens are fond, too, of guilles--a game resembling ninepins, although
the pins are knocked down, not with balls, but with a stick thrown
somewhat like a boomerang. Of course, they also enjoy tossing balls,
and young ladies no less than their brothers practice often with the
arbalist, shooting arrows with large heads for bringing down birds
which take refuge in bushes when pursued by the hawks.
[Sidenote: Hawking]
But chess, dice and every other game indoors or outdoors pales
before the pleasure of hawking or hunting. There is no peace-time
sensation like the joy of feeling a fast horse whisk you over the
verdant country, leaping fences, and crashing through thickets with
some desperate quarry ahead. It is even a kind of substitute for the
delights of war. If a visiting knight shows the least willingness, the
baron will certainly urge him to tarry for a hunting party. It will
then depend on the season, the desire of the guests, and reports from
the kennels and mews and the forest whether the chase will be with
hawks or with hounds.
Master huntsmen and falconers are always at swords' points. Their
noble employers also lose their tempers in the arguments as to venery
and falconry, but the truth is that both sports are carried on
simultaneously at every castle. If fresh meat is needed, if most of the
riders are men, if time is abundant, probably the order is "bring out
the dogs." If only the sport is wanted, and the ladies can ride out
merely for an afternoon, the call is for the hawks.
[Illustration: LADY WITH A FALCON ON HER WRIST
From a thirteenth-century seal (Archives nationales).]
Hunting hawks are everywhere. Last Sunday Adela and Alienor rode over
to mass at the abbey church. The good brethren chanting the service
were nowise disturbed when each of their high-born worshipers kept a
great hooded hawk strapped to her wrist during the whole service.[16]
It is well to take your hawks everywhere with you, especially when
there are crowds of people, to accustom them to bustle and shouting;
but we suspect another reason for always taking hawks about is that
the carrying of a hunting bird on your wrist is a recognized method of
saying, "I am of gentle blood and need not do any disagreeable work
with my hands."
[Sidenote: Complicated Art of Falconry]
Falcons are counted "noble birds"; they rank higher in the social
hierarchy of beasts than even eagles. If one cannot afford large hawks
and falcons one can at least keep sparrow hawks; and "sparrow hawk"
is the nickname for poor sires who only maintain birds large enough
to kill partridges and quails. In short, the possession of a hawk of
_some_ kind is almost as necessary for a nobleman as wearing a sword,
even with knights who can seldom go out hunting. However, it takes
a rich noble like Conon to possess a regular falconry with special
birds, each trained for attacking a certain kind of game--hares, kites,
herons--with the expert attendants to care for them.
[Illustration: THE FALCON HUNT
Thirteenth century; from a German manuscript in the Bibliothèque de
Bruxelles.]
Falconry has become a complicated art. Very possibly the good folk in
St. Aliquis will have their bodies physicked or bled by physicians
much less skillful in treating human ills than Conon's falconers are
in treating birds. To climb high trees or crags and steal the young
hawk out of the nest is itself no trifling undertaking.[17] Then the
prizes must be raised to maturity, taught to obey whistles and calls,
and to learn instantly to do the bidding of the master. In the baron's
mews are more than a score of birds; gerfalcons, saker hawks, lanners,
merlins, and little sparrow hawks squawk, peck, and squabble along with
huge goshawks. The male birds are generally smaller than the female,
and the latter are reserved for striking the swiftest game, such as
herons. Some birds will return of their own accord to the hand of the
master after taking game, but many, including all sparrow hawks, have
to be enticed back by means of a lure of red cloth shaped like a bird.
The falconer swings his lure by a string, and whistles, and, since the
falcon is accustomed to find a bit of meat attached to the lure, he
will fly down promptly and thus be secured.
Conon's head falconer is only a villein, but he is such an expert
that recently the Count of Champagne offered a hundred Paris livres
for him. This important personage is himself the son of a falconer,
for the science runs in families. He is a man of shrewd knowledge and
a real wizard at breaking in young birds, teaching them to strike
dummies and decoys, to remain contented in their cages or hooded on
their perches, and yet not lose their hunting spirit. He has precise
methods of feeding--so much meat, preferably poultry, and so much of
vegetables, preferably fresh fruit. He takes long counsel with Conon
how a recalcitrant goshawk can be induced to sit quietly on the baron's
fist. He also teaches young François to carry his little sparrow hawk
so it will not be incommoded by any horse motion or be beaten upon
unpleasantly by the wind, and how to adjust its hood.
[Sidenote: Professional Jargon of Falconry]
There are few more acceptable presents to a nobleman or, better still,
to a lady, than a really fine bird. Abbots send five or six superior
hawks to the king when craving protection for their monasteries.
Foreign ambassadors present His Royal Grace with a pair of birds
as the opening wedge to negotiations. The "reception of hawks" is
indeed a regular ceremony at the Paris court. Most of Conon's hawks
have come from fellow cavaliers who craved his favor. The St. Aliquis
gentry pride themselves on understanding all the professional jargon
of falconry. Only peasant clowns would confess themselves ignorant
thereof; yet even among nobles few speak it really well. The other day
a pretentious knight dined at the castle. He put his gerfalcon on the
perch provided in the hall for such use by the guests. But, thunder of
heaven! how great seemed his foolishness when Conon courteously led the
subject around to falconry! "He said: 'The _hand_ of the bird' instead
of 'the talon'; 'the _talon_' instead of 'the claw'; 'the _claw_'
instead of 'the nail.' It was most distressing to find such a man with
a claim to courteous treatment!"
[Illustration: NOBLE HOLDING A FALCON IN EACH HAND
Thirteenth century; restored by Viollet-Le-Duc, from a manuscript in
the Bibliothèque de Bruxelles.]
Of course, at some excesses in falconry Conon draws the line. He
considers impious his neighbor the Viscount of Foretvert, who sprinkles
his hawks with holy water prior to every hunt, and says a prayer over
them adjuring, "You, O Eagles, by the True God, the Holy Virgin, and
the holy prophets, to leave the field clear for our birds and not to
molest them in their flight." The church has never authorized this,
though the viscount's worldly chaplain certainly condones the practice.
Everything about falcons must be compatible with their nobility. The
glove on which they are carried is embroidered with gold. The hood
which keeps them blindfolded is likewise adorned with gold thread,
pearls, and bright feathers. Every bird has attached to his legs two
little bells engraved with his owner's name. High in the air they can
be heard tinkling. If the bird is lost the peasants discovering it can
return it to the owner--and woe to the villein who retains a falcon
found in the forest! The local law provides that either he must pay a
ruinous fine or let the falcon eat six ounces of flesh from his breast.
As for stealing a hunting bird outright, there is hardly a speedier
road to the gallows; it is what horse stealing some day will become in
communities very far from France.
Assuredly it is an exhilarating sight to see the castle folk go hawking
on a fine morning. The baron, baroness, and all their older relatives
and guests, each with bird on gauntlet, are on tall horses; the squires
and younger people have sparrow hawks to send against the smaller
prey, but the leaders of the sport will wait until they can strike a
swift duck or heron. Dogs will race along to flush the game. Horns are
blowing, young voices laughing, all the horses prancing. Conon gives
the word. Away they go--racing over fences, field and fallow, thicket
and brook, until fate sends to view a heron. Then all the hawks are
unhooded together; there are shouts, encouragement, merry wagers, and
helloing as the birds soar in the chase. The heron may meet his fate
far in the blue above. Then follow more racing and scurrying to recover
the hawks. So onward, covering many miles of country, until, with blood
tingling, all canter back to St. Aliquis in a determined mood for
supper.
[Sidenote: Hunting Serious Business]
Hunting is more serious business than falconry. The castle folk do
not care much for beef and mutton; they prefer venison and boar's
meat, and the great woods to the east of the castle supply food no
less than diversion. Hunting is a pursuit quite allowable to pious
laymen, and in moderation is even commended by the Church. By hunting
one benefits one's soul, for thus we "avoid the sin of indolence, and,
according to our faith, he who avoids the seven mortal sins will be
saved; therefore, the good sportsmen will be saved." The huntsmen's
saints--St. Germain, St. Martin, and above all St. Hubert of Liège, a
renowned hunter of the eighth century[18]--are invoked in countless
castles oftener, one fears, than such greater saints as St. Peter and
St. Paul.
[Illustration: A HUNTER
From a seal of the thirteenth century (Archives nationales).]
There are many dangerous beasts in the great forests spread over
France. Charlemagne (the tale runs) was once nearly hugged to death by
a hard-pressed bear. Every nobleman has met with very ugly boars and
also powerful stags who fought desperately.
As for the ladies (who, after all, are of one blood with their
brothers) the hunt is almost the closest they can come to martial
pleasures. Adela and her sister-in-law can wind horns, follow stags,
control dogs almost as well as Conon and Aimery. Of course, they could
ride from early girlhood. On occasion of ceremony they ride sidesaddle,
but when hunting and hawking they go astride in wholly masculine
manner. François has been riding now for years, and even little Anseau,
barely seven, can cling to the back of a high steed and keep beside his
mother, unless the hunt becomes extremely furious.
The equipments for hunting are simple. The only real luxury is in the
hunting horns, the great olifants whose piercing notes can ring a mile
through the still forests. These horns are made of ivory, chased with
gold, and swung from each important rider's neck by a cord of silk or
fine leather. The hunters wear leather gauntlets and use a bow and
arrows, a "Danish ax" (a kind of tomahawk), a boar spear (the favorite
hunting weapon), and also a large knife for emergencies. As the party
mounts in the castle court, around them are leaping and yelping the
great pack of dogs--white in teeth, red tongues, straining the
leashes and barely controlled by their keepers. Dogs are loved almost
as much as falcons, and Conon has a large collection of greyhounds,
staghounds, boarhounds, and even of terrible bloodhounds. The kennels
are replenished constantly, for stags and old boars can kill many dogs
ere they are finally run down and speared. The gift of a litter of fine
puppies is, therefore, often as welcome as a cast of hawks.
[Sidenote: Chasing Down a Great Boar]
It is a happy day if a beater comes in with tidings of "a wild boar,
the strongest of which anyone has ever heard tell, in the forest of
Pevele and Vicogne near the free holdings of St. Bertin." The baron
will call out all the castle folk, and, if time admits, will send to
some favorite vassals a few miles away to join the sport. With ten
pairs of hounds and at least fifteen huntsmen and beaters he will
thus organize the pursuit. The hunt will start at dawn, and it will
take much of the forenoon to reach the forest where the boar has been
discovered. Then (recites a jongleur) will begin "the baying and the
yelping of dogs. They are unleashed. They bound through the thicket
and find the tracks where the boar has dug and rooted for worms." One
of the keepers then unleashes Blanchart, the baron's best bloodhound.
Conon pats his head and they put him on the track.
The hound soon discovers the boar's lair. "It is a narrow place between
the trunks of two uprooted oaks, near a spring. When the boar hears
the baying of the hound he stands erect, spreads his enormous feet,
and, disdaining flight, wheels around, until, judging himself within
reaching distance of the good hound, he seizes it and fells it dead
by his side. The baron would not have given Blanchart for one hundred
deniers. Not hearing his barking he runs up, sword in hand; but he is
too late; the boar is gone."
After that there is nothing for it except to keep up the chase
relentlessly until evening, with the whole company gradually scattering
through the forest until Conon at last overtakes the chase. But the
baron is now alone save for a few dogs. "The boar has finally come to
bay in front of a thicket. He begins by refreshing himself in a pool;
then, raising his brows, rolling his eyes, and snorting, he bares his
tusks and dashes upon the dogs, and rips them open or tears them to
pieces, one after another, all except three of the best greyhounds.
Then Conon arrives, and first of all he sees his dogs stretched out
dead. 'Oh, son of a sow,' cries he, 'it is you that have disemboweled
my dogs, have separated me from my friends, and have brought me I know
not where! You shall die!' He leaps from his steed. At his shout the
boar, despite bushes and ditches, leaps upon him swift as an arrow.
Conon lets him come straight on, and, holding the boar spear straight
before him, strikes at his breast. The point pierces the heart and
goes out at the shoulder blade. Mortally wounded, the boar swerves to
one side, totters, and falls."[19] So the chase ends and the dogs are
avenged. The baron has to blow his horn many times ere his party finds
him. Luckily the boar has run back somewhat toward St. Aliquis. They
are therefore able to get home in noisy triumph that night, and all the
castle women are under the red torches outside the gate to "oh!" and
"ah!" at the boar and to praise the prowess of their seigneur.
[Illustration: THE STAG HUNT
Twelfth century; from a window in the cathedral of Chartres.]
Conon is fortunate in being able to return home without more
adventures. His high suzerain, King Philip Augustus, while a young
prince, once followed a boar until he was lost in the forest, and
became justly anxious; but just as he was commending himself to God,
the Virgin, and "St. Denis, the protector of the King of France," to
his great relief he met "a charcoal burner, grim to behold, with a face
black with charcoal, carrying a great ax on his shoulder." This honest
peasant guided the prince to safety.
[Sidenote: Hunting Across Peasants' Lands]
One important part of the St. Aliquis population, however, regards
all hunting parties with far less satisfaction. The chase often goes
straight across the peasants' fields, with twenty horses beating down
the newly seeded ground or even the standing crops. This is the baron's
absolute privilege and any protest is treasonable. The villeins have
not simply to submit to this, but if deer nibble or boars root upon
their fields, they can merely try to scare the ravagers off. Their
lord and his friends alone may use arrow, blade, or spear against the
game. The St. Aliquis peasants bless the saints that this time the boar
kept conveniently in the forest and did not sell his life dearly in a
half-ripe cornfield.
Hawking and hunting are two great out-of-door sports, always excepting
martial exercises and downright war; although sometimes Aimery and
other young men, for a tame diversion, take crossbows and try to shoot
birds in the meadows.
If Conon is naturally the master of the hunt, Adela is as invariably
mistress of a very important place--the garden. Castles are
disagreeable residences. Even with the newer _palais_ rising beside
the grim donjon, they are usually dampish, illy lighted, and subject
to uncanny odors. In northern France there is enough confining weather
in any case. Therefore, the more reason there is, the moment the sun
shines, for hastening where there are sweet air, bright flowers, and
delightful greenness.
The castle garden is outside the barbican, shut off by a dense hedge
from the exercise ground. In it are not merely many beds of flowers,
but fruit trees and a group of venerable elms much older than the First
Crusade. Also, there is a broad, fine stretch of closely cropped grass,
shaded by the trees for most of the day. Here all kinds of things
can occur. At long tables the whole castle will dine and sup in fine
weather. Here Conon will assemble his vassals for ceremonious council.
Here will be played innumerable games of chess. And here especially, if
a few jongleurs can be found to saw their viols on fête days, all the
castle folk, noble and villein, will rapturously join in dances, not in
stuffy hall under midnight lamps, but in bright daylight with the merry
feet twinkling on God's soft green grass.
[Sidenote: The Castle Garden]
Adela has taken great pains with her garden, which fell into a bad
condition during Baron Garnier's day. She often councils with Brother
Sebastian at the abbey, a real botanist with a true love of plants
and flowers. One side of the beds is adorned with roses, lilies, and
marigolds. On the other grow useful herbs such as lettuce, cresses,
mint, parsley, hyssop, sage, coriander, and fennel. With these, too,
are also poppies, daffodils, and acanthus plants, while a vegetable
garden supplies the castle with cucumbers, beets, mustard, and
wormwood. The fruit trees yield a sizable crop of apples, quinces,
peaches, and pears. There is a kind of hot-house in which the baroness
has tried to raise figs, but with no great success; but, of course,
there is no difficulty in maturing grapes and cherries; indeed,
cherry festivals are among the most familiar and delightful holidays
in all this part of France. "Life," say monkish writers, warning the
thoughtless, "though perhaps pleasant, is transitory, 'even as is a
cherry fair.'"
"Crooked" Heman (the hunchbacked gardener) has considerable skill even
without the teachings of Brother Sebastian. He practices grafting
successfully, although his theories on the subject are absurd. He is
trying to develop a new kind of plum and is tenderly raising some of
the new "Agony" pears--a bitter variety for pickling. True, he believes
that cherries can grow without stones if you have the right recipe, and
that peach trees will bear pomegranates if only you can sprinkle them
with enough goats' milk. This does not prevent large practical results.
His tools are simple--an ax, a spade, a grafting knife, and a pruning
hook; but, thanks to the unlimited number of peasant clowns which the
baroness can put at his disposal, he keeps the garden and orchard in
admirable order.
Heman's office is the more important because the garden does not exist
solely as a pleasure spot or for its fruits and vegetables. Flowers are
in constant demand, whenever obtainable, for garlands and chaplets.
Even as with the Greeks, no feast is complete without them. Wild
flowers are in favor, and many a time Adela's maids are sent out to
gather and wreathe woodbine or hawthorn; but, of course, such a supply
is irregular. On every social occasion from early spring to the edge of
winter the castle garden must, therefore, supply its garlands. It is,
accordingly, one of the essential working units of St. Aliquis, along
with the stables, the mews, and the armory.
FOOTNOTES:
[14] Such a law was actually enacted for the entire kingdom of France
in 1256.
[15] A mediæval manuscript contains a vivid picture of two gamesters,
one of whom had only a shirt left; the other had been reduced to
sheer nakedness. Their companions had evidently stripped them almost
completely, leaving them to compete for one garment!
[16] We hear scandalous stories of bishops and abbots who did not
think it unfit to take their hawks to church. It is alleged that they
would strap their precious charges to the altar rail while they were
performing the holy offices.
[17] By the thirteenth century a material fraction of the better
falcons seem, however, to have been hatched and bred in captivity, thus
avoiding this perilous exercise.
[18] The story had it that he was converted to a religious life after
meeting in the woods a stag bearing between his horns an image of the
Saviour. St. Hubert's feast day was always faithfully celebrated by
kings and nobles.
[19] The quotations are from the story of the boar hunt in the romance
_Garin le Lorrain_, with Baron Conon substituted for Duke Begoy in the
original.