d his "good
star," to quote the Provencal biography, led him to the court of
Adelaide, daughter of Raimon V. of Toulouse, who had married in 1171
Roger II., Viscount of Beziers. There he soon rose into high repute: at
first he is said to have denied his authorship of the songs which he
composed in honour of his mistress, but eventually he betrayed himself
and was recognised as a troubadour of high merit, and definitely
installed as the singer of Adelaide. The story is improbable, as the
troubadour's rewards naturally depended upon the favour of his patrons
to him personally; it is probably an instance of the manner in which the
biographies founded fictions upon a very meagre substratum of fact, the
fact in this instance being a passage in which Arnaut declares his
timidity in singing the praise of so great a beauty as Adelaide.

Mas grans paors m'o tol e grans temensa, [51]
Qu'ieu non aus dir, dona, qu'ieu chant de vos.

"But great fear and great apprehension comes upon me, so that I dare not
tell you, lady, that it is I who sing of you."

Arnaut seems to have introduced a new poetical _genre_ into Provencal
literature, the love-letter. He says that the difficulty of finding a
trustworthy messenger induced him to send a letter sealed with his own
ring; the letter is interesting for the description of feminine beauty
which it contains: "my heart, that is your constant companion, comes to
me as your messenger and portrays for me your noble, graceful form, your
fair light-brown hair, your brow whiter than the lily, your gay laughing
eyes, your straight well-formed nose, your fresh complexion, whiter and
redder than any flower, your little mouth, your fair teeth, whiter than
pure silver,... your fair white hands with the smooth and slender
fingers"; in short, a picture which shows that troubadour ideas of
beauty were much the same as those of any other age. Arnaut was
eventually obliged to leave Beziers, owing, it is said, to the rivalry
of Alfonso II. of Aragon, who may have come forward as a suitor for
Adelaide after Roger's death in 1194. The troubadour betook himself to
the court of William VIII., Count of Montpelier, where he probably spent
the rest of his life. The various allusions in his poems cannot always [52]
be identified, and his career is only known to us in vague outline.
Apart from the love-letter, he was, if not the initiator, one of the
earliest writers of the type o