retending the most devoted and
innocent romantic love for Gaucelm, used to meet her real lover under
cover of Gaucelm's roof.

Though not at all essential to the story, it is a fact worth mentioning
that Gaucelm Faidit himself was married while the romance with Marie was
in progress. The wife of a troubadour, indeed, was not allowed to
interfere with any really serious business of his career, such as a love
affair with another man's wife. That this was so, in theory at least,
can be seen in the story of the lives of many of the troubadours; and
that the general attitude of Provencal society, as represented by this
particular phase of its literature, was unfavorable to matrimony, can be
seen most clearly when we look at those curious institutions called
Courts of Love. It is not yet quite certain whether the Courts of Love
are altogether or only partly mythical.

This century of ours is a Sancho Panza among the centuries; like that
stout and excellent squire, we have unlimited faith in things material,
visible, tangible, and especially eatable and no faith in things
romantic, such as windmills, and knights-errant, and chivalry. Looked at
from the Panzaic point of view, which we are fain to admit is also the
common-sense point of view, it seems inherently most improbable that any
set of people should waste their time upon anything so fantastic as the
Courts of Love. Yet Panza should be asked to remember that there are and
have been things in heaven and earth that surpass the limits of his
philosophy; that the race among whom such institutions are alleged to
have flourished was notoriously sentimental, or poetic, if you like a
more respectful term; that, for a parallel, he has only to go to a
famous French romance, published less than two centuries ago, which
contained a grave description and map of the Country of Love, a _Carte
du pays de Tendre_, with minute directions as to how the amorous
traveller might proceed safely on his journey to the city of true love;
and that Moliere's _Precieuses Ridicules_, however overdrawn for comic
effect, presents a picture of what really existed. Reason is,
undoubtedly, opposed to the possibility of the existence of the Courts
of Love; but, as we have said, we cannot always refuse to believe what
seems to us preposterous. The historical evidence for the existence of
the Courts of Love is unquestionably very scanty. Mr. Rowbotham, who
believes firmly in their existence, is forced to rel