ki estoit couverte de plon,
plate deseure, car adon
les faisoit on ensi couvrir
pour engins et pour assallir.
Cleomades a avisee
la tour ki estoit haute et lee;
lors pense qu'il s'arestera
sor cele tour tant qu'il savra,
se il puet, la certainite
quel pais c'est la verite.
lors a son cheval adrechie
viers la tour de marbre entaillie.
les chevilletes si tourna
que droit sour la tour aresta.
si coiement s'est avales
que sour aighe coie vait nes.

[Sidenote: Raoul de Houdenc.]

Raoul de Houdenc is an earlier poet than Adenes, and represents the
Roman d'Aventures in its infancy, when it still found it necessary to
attach itself to the great cycle of the Round Table. His works, besides
some shorter poems[94], consist of the _Roman des Eles_ (Ailes), a
semi-allegorical composition, describing the wings and feathers of
chivalry, that is to say, the great chivalrous virtues, among which
Raoul, like a herald as he was, gives Largesse the first place; of
_Meraugis de Portlesguez_, an important composition, possessing some
marked peculiarities of style; and possibly also of the _Vengeance de
Raguidel_, in which the author works out one of the innumerable
unfinished episodes of the great epic of _Percevale_. Thus Raoul de
Houdenc occupies no mean place in French literature, inasmuch as he
indicates the starting-point of two great branches, the Roman
d'Aventures and the allegorical poem, and this at a very early date.
This date is not known exactly; but it was certainly before 1228, when
the Trouvere Huon de Mery alludes to him, and classes him with Chrestien
as a master of French verse. He has in truth some very noteworthy
peculiarities. The chief of these, which must soon strike any reader of
_Meraugis_, is his tendency to _enjambement_ or overlapping of couplets.
It is a curious feature in the history of French verse that the
isolation of the couplet has constantly recurred in its history, and
that as constantly reformers have striven to break up the monotony so
produced by this process of _enjambement_. Perhaps Raoul is the earliest
who thus, as an indignant critic put it at the first representation of
_Hernani_, 'broke up verses, and threw them out of window.' Besides this
metrical characteristic, the thing most noteworthy in his poems (as
might indeed have been expected from his composition of the _Roman des
Eles_) is a tendency to allegorising, and to s