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The castle seemed to be in a somewhat disorderly state. Soldiers were playing dice by the gateway, and horses were stamping and feeding in the outer bailey. Peirol was evidently taken for the troubadour's servant, and an unkempt lad ushered them into a small room with a barred window, in one of the older towers.

It would sound to him like a parrot's laughter. This was no court of love. It was war. A troubadour's lute would tinkle emptily in these woods that had seen massacre and knew the shriek of the death cry. Again I set my teeth and rose. "Outchipouac, war is secret. I cannot tell you why I go to Michillimackinac. But trust me.

It was then like the Castillon of some troubadour's song; now it was a mean-looking little sun-baked town modernized to downright plainness, with no remnant of its ramparts remaining save a sombre old Gothic gateway near the river, and no ecclesiastical architecture deserving notice.

Yet every day the theme of this old troubadour's talk around the hotels is female entanglements mendacious, unwifely, and for him unavailing. Through divers channels some of my fellow-creatures specimens of the most dreadful prose have let me know that upon marrying I shall forfeit their usurious regard. As to them, I shall relapse into the privacy of an orchard that has been plucked of its fruit.

The Ménagier does not want his wife to be on a pedestal, like the troubadour's lady, nor licking his shoes like Griselda; he wants a helpmeet, for, as Chaucer said, 'If that wommen were nat goode and hir conseils goode and profitable, oure Lord God of hevene wolde never han wroght hem, ne called hem "help" of man, but rather confusioun of man. Ecclesiastical Jeremiahs were often wont to use the characteristically medieval argument that if God had meant woman for a position of superiority He would have taken her from Adam's head rather than his side; but the Ménagier would have agreed with the more logical Peter Lombard, who observed that she was not taken from Adam's head, because she was not intended to be his ruler, nor from his feet either, because she was not intended to be his slave, but from his side, precisely, because she was intended to be his companion.

He was a kind and noble master, and however long my search may be, I will yet obtain news of him." The knight warmly applauded the troubadour's resolution, and was turning to lead him into his abode, when his eye fell upon Cuthbert. "Methinks I know the face of your attendant as well as your own; though where I can have seen him I know not. Was he with you in the Holy Land?"

Yet was it no ecstasy, but a sober exhilaration; such as stirred my pulses indeed, and bade me once more face the world with a firm eye and an assured brow, but was far from holding out before me a troubadour's palace or any dazzling prospect. The longer I dwelt on the interview, the more clearly I saw the truth.

The countess had heard of his pilgrimage, and had hastened to greet him, only to be permitted to clasp his hand and to hear him gasp, with his last breath: "Having seen thee, I die satisfied." There is a distressing ambiguity about the troubadour's last words. And so there was the other troubadour, the Châtelain Regnault de Coucy.

Kuno Kohn did not answer, but he accepted her sympathetic soul like a gift in his water-blue troubadour's eyes. Trembling, she said that she suddenly loved him so much that it was incomprehensible.., she would never again let his arm go... she had not know that one could be so wildly happy... Kuno Kohn invited her to visit him the next evening. She accepted gladly.

Thus there was a service of love as there was a service of vassalage, and the lover stood to his lady in a position analogous to that of the vassal to his overlord. For practical purposes the contract merely implied that the lady was prepared to receive the troubadour's homage in poetry and to be the subject of his song.