ude the joys of
loving--

En paradis qu'ai-je a faire? Je n'i quier entrer, mais que j'aie
Nicolete, ma tres douce amie que j'aime tant.... Mais en enfer voil
jou aler. Car en enfer vont li bel clerc et li bel cevalier, qui
sont mort as tournois et as rices guerres, et li bien sergant, et
li franc homme.... Avec ciax voil jou aler, mais que j'aie
Nicolete, ma tres douce amie, avec moi. [What have I to do in
Paradise? I seek not to enter there, so that I have Nicolette, my
most sweet friend, whom I love so well.... But to Hell will I go.
For to Hell go the fine clerks and the fine knights, who have died
in tourneys and in rich wars, and the brave soldiers and the
free-born men.... With these will I go, so that I have Nicolette,
my most sweet friend, with me.]

--Aucassin, at once brave and naif, sensuous and spiritual, is as much
the type of the perfect medieval lover as Romeo, with his ardour and his
vitality, is of the Renaissance one. But the poem--for in spite of the
prose passages, the little work is in effect simply a poem--is not all
sentiment and dreams. With admirable art the author has interspersed
here and there contrasting episodes of realism or of absurdity; he has
woven into his story a succession of vivid dialogues, and by means of an
acute sense of observation he has succeeded in keeping his airy fantasy
in touch with actual things. The description of Nicolette, escaping from
her prison, and stepping out over the grass in her naked feet, with the
daisies, as she treads on them, showing black against her whiteness, is
a wonderful example of his power of combining imagination with detail,
beauty with truth. Together with the _Chanson de Roland_--though in such
an infinitely different style--_Aucassin et Nicolete_ represents the
most valuable elements in the French poetry of this early age.

With the thirteenth century a new development began, and one of the
highest importance--the development of Prose. _La Conquete de
Constantinople_, by VILLEHARDOUIN, written at the beginning of the
century, is the earliest example of those historical memoirs which were
afterwards to become so abundant in French literature; and it is
written, not in the poetical prose of _Aucassin et Nicolete_, but in the
simple, plain style of straightforward narrative. The book cannot be
ranked among the masterpieces; but it has the charm of sincerity and
that kind of pleasan