re ordinary conditions of middle-class
life. These _Fabliaux_, as they were called, are on the whole of no
great value as works of art; their poetical form is usually poor, and
their substance exceedingly gross. Their chief interest lies in the fact
that they reveal, no less clearly than the aristocratic _Chansons_, some
of the most abiding qualities of the French genius. Its innate love of
absolute realism and its peculiar capacity for cutting satire--these
characteristics appear in the _Fabliaux_ in all their completeness. In
one or two of the stories, when the writer possesses a true vein of
sensibility and taste, we find a surprising vigour of perception and a
remarkable psychological power. Resembling the _Fabliaux_ in their
realism and their bourgeois outlook, but far more delicate and witty,
the group of poems known as the _Roman de Renard_ takes a high place in
the literature of the age. The humanity, the dramatic skill, and the
command of narrative power displayed in some of these pleasant satires,
where the foibles and the cunning of men and women are thinly veiled
under the disguise of animal life, give a foretaste of the charming art
which was to blossom forth so wonderfully four centuries later in the
Fables of La Fontaine.

One other work has come down to us from this early epoch, which presents
a complete contrast, both with the rough, bold spirit of the _Chansons
de Geste_ and the literal realism of the _Fabliaux_. This is the
'chante-fable' (or mingled narrative in verse and prose) of _Aucassin et
Nicolete_. Here all is delicacy and exquisiteness--the beauty, at once
fragile and imperishable, of an enchanting work of art. The unknown
author has created, in his light, clear verse and his still more
graceful and poetical prose, a delicious atmosphere of delicate romance.
It is 'the tender eye-dawn of aurorean love' that he shows us--the
happy, sweet, almost childish passion of two young creatures who move,
in absolute innocence and beauty, through a wondrous world of their own.
The youth Aucassin, who rides into the fight dreaming of his beloved,
who sees her shining among the stars in heaven--

Estoilette, je te voi,
Que la lune trait a soi;
Nicolete est avec toi,
M'amiete o le blond poil.

(Little star, I see thee there,
That the moon draws close to her!
Nicolette is with thee there,
My love of the yellow hair.)--

who disdains the joys of Paradise, since they excl