III.

First of all they have epic tales; but how different from "Beowulf"! The Song of Roland, sung at Hastings, which was then the national song of the Normans as well as of all Frenchmen, is the most warlike poem in the literature of mediaeval France, the one that best recalls the Germanic origins of the race; yet a wide interval already separates these origins from the new nation; the change is striking.[168] Massacres, it is true, still occupy the principal place, and a scent of blood pervades the entire poem; hauberks torn open, bodies hewn in two, brains scattered on the grass, the steam rising from the battle, fill the poet's heart with rapture, and his soul is roused to enthusiasm. But a place is also kept for tender sentiments, and another for winged speeches. Woman is not yet the object of this tenderness; Charlemagne's peers do not remember Aude while they fight; they expire without giving her a sigh. But their eyes are dim with tears at the recollection of fair France; they weep to see their companions lie prostrate on the grass; the real mistress of Roland, the one to whom his last thought reverts, is not Aude but Durandal, his sword. This is his love, the friend of his life, whose fate, after he shall be no more, preoccupies him. Just as this sword has a name, it has a life of its own; Roland wishes it to die with him; he would like to kill it, as a lover kills his mistress to prevent her falling into the hands of miscreants. "The steel grates, but neither breaks nor notches. And the earl cries: Holy Mary, help me!... Ah! Durandal, so dearly beloved, how white and clear thou art! how thou shinest and flashest in the sunlight.... Ah! Durandal, fair and holy art thou!"[169] In truth, this is his love. Little, however, does it matter to ascertain with what or whom Roland is in love; the thing to be remembered is that he has a heart which can be touched and moved, and can indeed feel, suffer, and love.

At Roncevaux, as well as at Hastings, French readiness of wit appears even in the middle of the battle. Archbishop Turpin, so imposing when he bestows the last benediction on the row of corpses, keeps all through the fight a good-humour similar to that of the Conqueror. "This Saracen seems to me something of a heretic,"[170] he says, espying an enemy; and he fells him to earth. Oliver, too, in a passage which shows that if woman has no active part assigned to her in the poem she had begun to play an important one in real life, slays the caliph and says: Thou at least shalt not go boasting of our defeat, "either to thy wife or to any lady in thy land."[171]

It will finally be noticed that the subject of this epic, the oldest in France, is a defeat, thus showing, even in that far-distant age, what the heroic ideal of the nation was to be, that is, not so much to triumph as to die well. She will never lay down her arms merely because she is beaten; she will only lay them down when enough of her sons have perished. Even when victory becomes impossible, the nation, however resigned to the inevitable, still fights for honour. Such as we see her in the Song of Roland, such she appears in Froissart, and such she has ever shown herself: "For never was the realm of France so broken, but that some one to fight against could be found there."[172]

The conquerors of England are complete men; they are not only valiant, they are learned; they not only take interest in the immediate past of their own race; they are also interested in the distant past of other civilised nations; they make their poets tell them of the heroes of Greece and Rome, and immense metrical works are devoted to these personages, which will beguile the time and drive ennui away from castle-halls. These poems form a whole cycle; Alexander is the centre of it, as Charlemagne is of the cycle of France, and Arthur of the cycle of Britain.

The poets who write about these famous warriors endeavour to satisfy at once the contradictory tastes of their patrons for marvels and for truth. Their works are a collection of attested prodigies. They are unanimous in putting aside Homer's story, which does not contain enough miracles to please them, and, being in consequence little disposed to leniency, they reject the whole of it as apocryphal. I confess, says one of them, that Homer was a "marvellous clerk," but his tales must not be believed: "For well we know, past any doubt, that he was born more than a hundred years after the great host was gathered together."[173]

But the worst forger of Alexandria obtains the confidence of our poets; they read with admiration in old manuscripts a journal of the siege of Troy, and the old manuscripts declare the author of this valuable document to be Dares the Phrygian. The work has its counterpart executed in the Grecian camp by Dictys of Crete. No doubt crosses their mind; here is authenticity and truth, here are documents to be trusted; and how interesting they are, how curious! the very journal of an eye-witness; truth and wonder made into one.

For Alexander they have a no less precious text: the Pseudo-Callisthenes, composed in Greek at Alexandria, of which a Latin version of the fourth century still exists. They are all the better disposed towards it that it is a long tissue of marvels and fabulous adventures.[174] For the history of Thebes they are obliged to content themselves with Statius, and for that of Rome with Virgil, that same Virgil who became by degrees, in mediaeval legends, an enchanter, the Merlin of the cycle of Rome. He had, they believed, some weird connection with the powers of darkness; for he had visited them and described in his "AEneid" their place of abode: no one was surprised at seeing Dante take him for a guide.

What these poets wished for was a certificate of authenticity at starting. Once they had it, they took no further trouble; it was their passport; and with a well-worded passport one can go a long way. After having blamed Homer and appealed to Dares, they felt themselves above suspicion, laid hands on all they could, and invented in their turn. Here is, for example, an episode in the romance of Alexander, a story of maidens in a forest, who sink underground in winter and reappear in spring in the shape of flowers: it will be vainly sought for in Callisthenes; it is of Eastern origin, and is found in Edrisi. For want of better, and to avoid the trouble of naming names, the authors will sometimes refer their public to "Latin books," and such was the renown of Rome that the reader asked nothing more.

No need to add that manners and dresses were scarcely better observed than probability. Everything in these poems was really _translated_; not only the language of the ancients, but their raiment, their civilisation, their ideas. Venus becomes a princess; the heroes are knights, and their costumes are so much in the fashion of the day that they serve us to date the poems. The miniatures conform to the tale; tonsured monks bear Achilles to the grave; they carry tapers in their hands. Queen Penthesilea, "doughty and bold, and beautiful and virtuous," rides astride, her heels armed with huge red spurs.[175] Oedipus is dubbed a knight; AEneas takes counsel of his "barons." This manner of representing antiquity lasted till the Renaissance; and till much later, on the stage. Under Louis XIV., Augustus wore a perruque "in-folio"; and in the last century Mrs. Hartley played Cleopatra in _paniers_ on the English stage.

In accordance with these ideas were written in French, for the benefit of the conquerors of England, such tales as the immense "Roman de Troie," by Benoit de Sainte-More, in which is related, for the first time in any modern language, the story of Troilus and Cressida; the "Roman de Thebes," written about 1150; that of "Eneas," composed during the same period; the History of Alexander, or the "Roman de toute Chevalerie," a vast compilation, one of the longest and dullest that be, written in the beginning of the thirteenth century by Eustace or Thomas of Kent; the Romance of "Ipomedon," and the Romance of "Prothesilaus," by Hue of Rotelande, composed before 1191; and many others besides[176]: all romances destined to people of leisure, delighting in long descriptions, in prodigious adventures, in enchantments, in transformations, in marvels. Alexander converses with trees who foretell the future to him; he drinks from the fountain of youth; he gets into a glass barrel lighted by lamps, and is let down to the bottom of the sea, where he watches the gambols of marine monsters; his army is attacked by wild beasts unaffrighted by flames, that squat in the midst of the fires intended to scare them away. He places the corpse of the admiral who commanded at Babylon in an iron coffin, that four loadstones hold to the vault. The authors give their imagination full scope; their romances are operas; at every page we behold a marvel and a change of scene; here we have the clouds of heaven, there the depths of the sea. I write of these more than I believe, "equidem plura transcribo quam credo," Quintus Curtius had already said.[177]

Just as they had curiously inspected their new domains, appropriating to themselves as much land as possible, so the conquerors inspected the literatures of their new compatriots. If, as will be seen, they drew little from the Saxon, it is not because they were absolutely ignorant of it, but because they never could well understand its genius. Amongst the different races with which they now found themselves in contact, they were at once attracted by intellectual sympathy to the Celtic, whose mind resembled their own. Alexander had been an amusement, Arthur became a passion. To the Anglo-Norman singers are due the most ancient and beautiful poems of the Briton cycle that have come down to us.

In the "matter" of France, the heroic valour of the defenders of the country forms the principal interest of the stories; in the matter of Rome, the "mirabilia"; and, in the matter of Britain, love. We are farther and farther removed from Beowulf.

At the time of the Conquest a quantity of legends and tales were current concerning the Celtic heroes of Britain, some of whom were quite independent of Arthur; nevertheless all ended by being grouped about him, for he was the natural centre of all this literature: "The Welsh have never ceased to rave about him up to our day," wrote the grave William of Malmesbury in the century after the Conquest; he was a true hero, and deserved something better than the "vain fancies of dreamers." William obviously was not under the spell of Arthurian legends.[178]

Wales, Brittany, and Cornwall were the centres where these legends had developed; the Briton harpists had, by the beauty of their tales, and the sweetness of their music, early acquired a great reputation. It was a recommendation for a minstrel to be able to state that he was a Briton, and some usurped this title, as does Renard the fox, in the "Roman de Renart."[179]

One thing, however, was lacking for a time to the complete success of the Arthurian epic: the stamp of authenticity, the Latin starting-point. An Anglo-Norman clerk furnished it, and bestowed upon this literature the Dares it needed. Professional historians were silent, or nearly so, respecting Arthur; Gildas, in the sixth century, never mentions him; Nennius, in the tenth, only devotes a few lines to him.[180] Geoffrey of Monmouth makes up for this deficiency.[181]

His predecessors knew nothing, he knows everything; his British genealogies are precise, his narratives are detailed, his enumerations complete. The mist had lifted, and the series of these kings about whom so many charming legends were afloat now appeared as clear as the succession of the Roman emperors. In their turn they present themselves with the authority conferred at that time in the world by great Latin books. They ceased to be the unacknowledged children of anybody's fancy; they had to own them, not some stray minstrel, but a personage of importance, known to the king of the land, who was to become bishop of St. Asaph, and be a witness at the peace of 1153, between Stephen of Blois and the future Henry II. In 1139, the "Historia Regum Britanniae" had appeared, and copies began to circulate. Henry of Huntingdon, passing at the Abbey of Bec, in Normandy, in the month of January of that year, finds one, and is filled with astonishment. "Never," writes he to one of his friends, "had I been able to obtain any information, oral or written, on the kings from Brutus to Caesar.... But to my amazement I have just discovered--stupens inveni--a narrative of these times."[182] It was Geoffrey's book.

The better to establish his authority, Geoffrey himself had been careful to appeal to a mysterious source, a certain book of which no trace has ever been found, and which he pretends was given him by his friend Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford. Armed with this proof of authenticity, which no one could contest, he ends his history by a half-serious, half-joking challenge to the professional chroniclers of his time. "I forbid William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon to speak of the British kings, seeing that they have never had in their hands the book Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, brought me from Brittany." Cervantes never spoke with more gravity of Cid Hamet-ben-Engeli.

Such a book could not fail of success; it had a prodigious fame. Some historians lodged protests; they might as well have protested against Dares. Gerald de Barry cried out it was an imposture; and William of Newbury inveighed against the impudence of "a writer called Geoffrey," who had made "Arthur's little finger bigger than Alexander's back."[183] In vain; copies of the "Historia Regum" multiplied to such an extent that the British Museum alone now possesses thirty-four of them. The appointed chronicler of the Angevin kings, Wace, translated it into French about 1155, with the addition of several legends omitted by Geoffrey, that of the Round Table among others.[184] It was turned into Latin verse, into French alexandrines, into Welsh prose; no honour was denied it. From this time dates the literary fortune of Arthur, Merlin, Morgan the fairy, Percival, Tristan and Iseult, Lancelot and Guinevere, whose deeds and loves have been sung from century to century, down to the day of Shakespeare, of Swinburne, and Tennyson.

The finest poems the Middle Ages devoted to them were written on English ground, and especially the most charming of all, dedicated to that Tristan,[185] whom Dante places by Helen of Troy in the group of lovers: "I beheld Helen, who caused such years of woe, and I saw great Achilles ... Paris and Tristan."[186]

Tristan's youth was spent in a castle of Leonois, by the sea. One day a Norwegian vessel, laden with stuffs and with hunting-birds, brings to before the walls. Tristan comes to buy falcons; he lingers to play chess with the merchants; the anchor is weighed, and Tristan is borne off in the ship. A storm drives the vessel on the coast of Cornwall, and the youth is conducted before King Marc. Harpers were playing; Tristan remembers Briton lays; he takes the harp, and so sweet is his music that "many a courtier remains there, forgetting his very name."[187] Marc (who turns out to be his uncle) takes a fancy to him, and dubs him knight. "Should any one," says the author of one of the versions of Tristan, "inquire of me concerning the dress of the knights, I will tell him in a few words; it was composed of four stuffs: courage, richness, skill, and courtesy."

Morolt, the giant, comes to claim a tribute of sixty youths and maidens, in the name of the king of Ireland. They were proceeding to select these victims, when Tristan challenges the giant and kills him; but he is wounded by a poisoned weapon, and, day by day, death draws nearer. No one can cure this poison except the queen of Ireland, sister of the dead man. Tristan, disguised as a poor harper, has himself put on a bark and arrives in Dublin, where the queen heals him. The queen had a daughter, Iseult, with fair hair; she begs the harper to instruct the young girl. Iseult becomes perfect: "She can both read and write, she composes epistles and songs; above all, she knows many [Briton] lays. She is sought after for her musical talent, no less than for her beauty, a silent and still sweeter music that through the eyes insinuated itself into the heart." All her life she remembered the teaching of Tristan, and in her sorrows had recourse to the consoling power of music. When sitting alone and sad, she would sing "a touching song of love," on the misfortunes of Guiron, killed for the sake of his lady. This lay "she sings sweetly, the voice accords with the harp, the hands are beautiful, the lay is fine, sweet the voice and low the tone."[188]

Tristan's task being accomplished, he returns to Cornwall. One day a swallow drops at the feet of King Marc a golden hair, so soft and brilliant, so lovable, that the king swears to marry no other woman but her of the golden hair.[189] Tristan starts in quest of the woman. The woman is Iseult; he brings her to Cornwall. While at sea the two young people swallow by mistake an enchanted draught, a "boivre" destined for Marc and his betrothed, which had the virtue of producing a passion that only death could end. The poison slowly takes effect; their sentiments alter. "All that I know troubles me, and all I see pains me," says Iseult. "The sky, the sea, my own self oppresses me. She bent forward, and leant her arm on Tristan's shoulder: it was her first caress. Her eyes filled with repressed tears; her bosom heaved, her lips quivered, and her head remained bent."

The marriage takes place. Marc adores the queen, but she thinks only of Tristan. Marc is warned, and exiles Tristan, who, in the course of his adventures, receives a present of a wonderful dog. This dog wore a bell on his neck, the sound of which, so sweet it was, caused all sorrow to be forgotten. He sends the dog to Iseult, who, listening to the bell, finds that her grief fades from her memory; and she removes the collar, unwilling to hear and to forget.

Iseult is at last repudiated, and Tristan bears her off by lonely paths, through forest depths, until they reach a grotto of green marble carved by giants in ages past. An aperture at the top let in the light, lindens shaded the entrance, a rill trickled over the grass, flowers scented the air, birds sang in the branches. Here nothing more existed for them save love. "Nor till the might of August"--thought the old poet, and said a more recent one--

Nor till the might of August overhead Weighed on the world, was yet one roseleaf shed Of all their joys warm coronal, nor aught Touched them in passing ever with a thought That ever this might end on any day, Or any night not love them where they lay; But like a babbling tale of barren breath Seemed all report and rumour held of death, And a false bruit the legend tear impearled That such a thing as change was in the world.[190]

King Marc's hunt passes by the grotto; through an opening at the top he chances to perceive her who had been "the springtide of his life, fairer than ever at this moment ... her mouth, her brow, every feature was so full of charm that Marc was fascinated, and, seized with longing, would fain on that face have pressed a kiss.... A wreath of clover was woven in her unbound locks.... When he saw that the sun overhead let fall through the crevice a ray of light on Iseult's face, he feared lest her hue should suffer. He took grass and flowers and foliage with which he closed the aperture, then blessing the lady, he commended her to God, and departed weeping."[191]

Once more the lovers are separated, this time for ever. Years pass; Tristan has made himself famous by his exploits. He is without news of his love, doubtless forgotten. He marries another Iseult, and lives with her near Penmarch in Brittany. Wounded to death in a fight, he might be cured by the queen of Cornwall, and in spite of his marriage, and the time that has elapsed, he sends her word to leave all and join him. If Iseult comes, the ship is to have a white sail; if she refuses, a black one. Iseult still loves. At the first word she puts to sea; but storms arise, then follows a dead calm; Tristan feels life ebb from him with hope. At last the vessel appears, and Tristan's wife sees it from the shore with its white sail. She had overheard Tristan's message; she returns, lies, and announces the arrival of a black sail. Tristan tears the bandage from his wound and dies. When the true Iseult lands, the knell is tolling from the steeples of Brittany; she rushes in, finds her lover's corpse already cold, and expires beside him. They were buried in the same church at Carhaix, one at each end; out of one of the tombs grew a vine, and out of the other grew a rose, and the branches, creeping along the pillars, interlaced under the vaulted roof. The magic draught thus proved stronger than death.

In the ancient epic poems, love was nothing, here it is everything; and woman, who had no part, now plays the first; warlike feats are henceforth only a means to win her heart. Grass has grown over the bloody vale of Roncevaux, which is now enamelled with flowers; Roland's love, Durandal, has ascended to heaven, and will return no more. The new poets are the exact antithesis of the former ones. Religion, virtue, country, now count for nothing; love defies, nay more, replaces them. Marc's friends, who warn him, are traitors and felons, vowed to scorn and hate, as were formerly Gannelons, who betrayed fair France. To be in love is to be worthy of heaven, is to be a saint, and to practise virtue. This theory, put forward in the twelfth century by the singers of the British cycle, has survived, and will be found again in the "Astree," in Byron, and in Musset.

These tales multiply, and their worldly, courteous, amorous character becomes more and more predominant. Woman already plays the part that she plays in the novels of yesterday. A glance opens Paradise to Arthur's knights; they find in a smile all the magic which it pleases us, the living of to-day, to discover there. A trite word of farewell from the woman they cherish is transformed by their imagination, and they keep it in their hearts as a talisman. Who has not cherished similar talismans? Lancelot recalls the past to queen Guinevere: "And you said, God be with you, fair, gentle friend! Never since have these words left my heart. It is these words that shall make me a _preux_, if ever I am one; for never since was I in such great peril but that I remembered these words. They have comforted me in all my sorrows; these words have kept and guarded me from all danger; these words have fed me when hungry and made me wealthy when poor."

"By my troth," said the queen, "those words were happily spoken, and blessed be God who caused me to speak them. But I did not put into them as much as you saw, and to many a knight have I spoken the same without thinking of more than what they plainly bear."[192]

After being a saint, the beloved object becomes a goddess; her wishes are decrees, her mysterious caprices are laws which must not even be questioned; harder rules of love are from year to year imposed on the heroes; they are expected to turn pale at the sight of their mistress; Lancelot espying a hair of Guinevere well-nigh faints; they observe the thirty-one regulations laid down by Andre le Chapelain, to guide the perfect lover.[193] After having been first an accessory, then an irresistible passion, love, that the poets think to magnify, will soon be nothing but a ceremonial. From the time of Lancelot we border on folly; military honour no longer counts for the hero; Guinevere out of caprice orders Lancelot to behave "his worst"; without hesitating or comprehending he obeys, and covers himself with shame. Each successive romance writer goes a step farther, and makes new additions; we come to immense compositions, to strings of adventures without any visible link; to heroes so uniformly wonderful that they cease to inspire any interest whatever. Tristan's rose-bush twined itself around the pillars, the pillars are lacking now, and the clusters of flowers trail on the ground. Tristan was a harbinger of Musset; Guinevere gives us a desire for a Cervantes.

Meanwhile, the minstrels of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries enjoy their success and their fame; their number increases; they are welcomed in the castles, hearkened to in the towns; their tales are copied in manuscripts, more and more magnificently painted. They celebrate, in England as in France, Gauvain, "le chevalier aux demoiselles," Ivain, "le chevalier au lion"; Merlin, Joseph of Arimathea, Percival and the quest of the mysterious Graal, and all the rest of the Round Table heroes.[194]