farther than Cyprus. There he married a Greek woman and
was somehow persuaded that his wife was a daughter of the Emperor of
Constantinople, and that he, therefore, had a claim to the throne of
Greece. He assumed royal state, added a throne to his personal
possessions and began to raise a fleet for the conquest of his kingdom.
How long this farce continued is unknown. Barral died in 1192 and Peire
transferred his affections to a lady of Carcassonne, Loba de Pennautier. [73]
The biography relates that her name Loba (wolf) induced the troubadour
to approach her in a wolf's skin, which disguise was so successful that
he was attacked by a pack of dogs and seriously mauled. Probably the
story that an outraged husband had the troubadour's tongue cut out at an
earlier period of his life contains an equal substratum of truth. The
last period of his career was spent in Hungary and Lombardy. His
political _sirventes_ show an insight into the affairs of his age, which
is in strong contrast to the whimsicality which seems to have misguided
his own life.

Guillem de Cabestanh (between 1181 and 1196) deserves mention for the
story which the Provencal biography has attached to his name, a
Provencal variation of the thirteenth century romance of the _Chatelaine
de Coucy_.[25] He belonged to the Roussillon district, on the borders of
Catalonia and fell in love with the wife of his overlord, Raimon of
Roussillon. Margarida or Seremonda, as she is respectively named in the
two versions of the story, was attracted by Guillem's songs, with the
result that Raimon's jealousy was aroused and meeting the troubadour one
day, when he was out hunting, he killed him. The Provencal version
proceeds as follows: he then took out the heart and sent it by a squire
to the castle. He caused it to be roasted with pepper and gave it to his [74]
wife to eat. And when she had eaten it, her lord told her what it was
and she lost the power of sight and hearing. And when she came to
herself, she said, "my lord, you have given me such good meat that never
will I eat such meat again." He made at her to strike her but she threw
herself from the window and was killed. Thereupon the barons of
Catalonia and Aragon, led by King Alfonso, are said to have made a
combined attack upon Raimon and to have ravaged his lands, in
indignation at his barbarity.

The Provencal biography, like the romance of the _Chatelain de Coucy_,
belongs to the thirteenth century, and the st