zan Kaan, the accomplished Mongol Sovereign of
Persia, to whom our Traveller conveyed a bride from Cambaluc, is said by
the historian Rashiduddin to have known something of the Frank tongue,
probably French.[14] Nay, if we may trust the author of the Romance of
Richard Coeur-de-Lion, French was in his day the language of still higher
spheres![15]

Nor was Polo's case an exceptional one even among writers on the East who
were not Frenchmen. Maundevile himself tells us that he put his book first
"out of Latyn into Frensche," and then out of French into English.[16] The
History of the East which the Armenian Prince and Monk Hayton dictated to
Nicolas Faulcon at Poictiers in 1307 was taken down in French. There are
many other instances of the employment of French by foreign, and
especially by Italian authors of that age. The Latin chronicle of the
Benedictine Amato of Monte Cassino was translated into French early in the
13th century by another monk of the same abbey, at the particular desire
of the Count of Militree (or Malta), "_Pour ce qu'il set lire et entendre
fransoize et s'en delitte._"[17] Martino da Canale, a countryman and
contemporary of Polo's, during the absence of the latter in the East wrote
a Chronicle of Venice in the same language, as a reason for which he
alleges its general popularity.[18] The like does the most notable example
of all, Brunetto Latini, Dante's master, who wrote in French his
encyclopaedic and once highly popular work _Li Tresor_.[19] Other examples
might be given, but in fact such illustration is superfluous when we
consider that Rusticiano himself was a compiler of French Romances.

But why the language of the Book as we see it in the Geographic Text
should be so much more rude, inaccurate, and Italianized than that of
Rusticiano's other writings, is a question to which I can suggest no reply
quite satisfactory to myself. Is it possible that we have in it a literal
representation of Polo's own language in dictating the story,--a rough
draft which it was intended afterwards to reduce to better form, and which
was so reduced (after a fashion) in French copies of another type,
regarding which we shall have to speak presently?[20] And, if this be the
true answer, why should Polo have used a French jargon in which to tell
his story? Is it possible that his own mother Venetian, such as he had
carried to the East with him and brought back again, was so little
intelligible to Rusticiano that Fr