"she saw the roses blow,
Heard the birds sing loud and low."
Again, the minstrel speaks out what many must have thought, in those
incredulous ages of Faith, about Heaven and Hell, Hell where the gallant
company makes up for everything. When he comes to a battle-piece he
makes Aucassin "mightily and knightly hurl through the press," like one
of Malory's men. His hero must be a man of his hands, no mere sighing
youth incapable of arms. But the minstrels heart is in other things, for
example, in the verses where Aucassin transfers to Beauty the
wonder-working powers of Holiness, and makes the sight of his lady heal
the palmer, as the shadow of the Apostle, falling on the sick people,
healed them by the Gate Beautiful. The Flight of Nicolete is a familiar
and beautiful picture, the daisy flowers look black in the ivory
moonlight against her feet, fair as Bombyca's "feet of carven ivory" in
the Sicilian idyll, long ago. {4} It is characteristic of the poet that
the two lovers begin to wrangle about which loves best, in the very mouth
of danger, while Aucassin is yet in prison, and the patrol go down the
moonlit street, with swords in their hands, sworn to slay Nicolete. That
is the place and time chosen for this ancient controversy. Aucassin's
threat that if he loses Nicolete he will not wait for sword or knife, but
will dash his head against a wall, is in the very temper of the prisoned
warrior-poet, who actually chose this way of death. Then the night
scene, with its fantasy, and shadow, and moonlight on flowers and street,
yields to a picture of the day, with the birds singing, and the shepherds
laughing, in the green links between wood and water. There the shepherds
take Nicolete for a fairy, so bright a beauty shines about her. Their
mockery, their independence, may make us consider again our ideas of
early Feudalism. Probably they were in the service of townsmen, whose
good town treated the Count as no more than an equal of its corporate
dignity. The bower of branches built by Nicolete is certainly one of the
places where the minstrel himself has rested and been pleased with his
work. One can feel it still, the cool of that clear summer night, the
sweet smell of broken boughs, and trodden grass, and deep dew, and the
shining of the star that Aucassin deemed was the translated spirit of his
lady. Romance has touched the book here with her magic, as she has
touched the lines where we read how Consuelo came by moonlight to the
Canon's garden and the white flowers. The pleasure here is the keener
for contrast with the luckless hind whom Aucassin encountered in the
forest: the man who had lost his master's ox, the ungainly man who wept,
because his mother's bed had been taken from under her to pay his debt.
This man was in that estate which Achilles, in Hades, preferred above the
kingship of the dead outworn. He was hind and hireling to a villein,
[Greek text]
It is an unexpected touch of pity for the people, and for other than love-
sorrows, in a poem intended for the great and courtly people of chivalry.
At last the lovers meet, in the lodge of flowers beneath the stars. Here
the story should end, though one could ill spare the pretty lecture the
girl reads her lover as they ride at adventure, and the picture of
Nicolete, with her brown stain, and jogleor's attire, and her viol,
playing before Aucassin in his own castle of Biaucaire. The burlesque
interlude of the country of Torelore is like a page out of Rabelais,
stitched into the _cante-fable_ by mistake. At such lands as Torelore
Pantagruel and Panurge touched many a time in their vague voyaging.
Nobody, perhaps, can care very much about Nicolete's adventures in
Carthage, and her recognition by her Paynim kindred. If the old captive
had been a prisoner among the Saracens, he was too indolent or incurious
to make use of his knowledge. He hurries on to his journey's end;
"Journeys end in lovers meeting."
So he finishes the tale. What lives in it, what makes it live, is the
touch of poetry, of tender heart, of humorous resignation. The old
captive says the story will gladden sad men:-
"Nus hom n'est si esbahis,
tant dolans ni entrepris,
de grant mal amaladis,
se il l'oit, ne soit garis,
et de joie resbaudis,
tant par est douce."
This service it did for M. Bida, the painter, as he tells us when he
translated Aucassin in 1870. In dark and darkening days, _patriai
tempore iniquo_, we too have turned to _Aucassin et Nicolete_. {5}