e and parody--they were low-class forces,
but forces nevertheless--had already commenced the work of destruction.
We are in possession of an abominable little poem of the thirteenth
century, which is nothing but a scatological pamphlet directed against
chivalry. This ignoble _Audigier_, the author of which is the basest of
men, is not the only attack which one may disinter from amid the
literature of that period. If one wishes to draw up a really complete
list it would be necessary to include the _jabliaux_--the _Renart_ and
the _Rose_, which constitute the most anti-chivalrous--I had nearly
written the most Voltairian--works that I am acquainted with. The thread
is easy enough to follow from the twelfth century down to the author of
_Don Quixote_--which I do not confound with its infamous predecessors--
to Cervantes, whose work has been fatal, but whose mind was elevated.

However that may be, parody and the parodists were themselves a cause of
decay. They weakened morals. Gallic-like, they popularized little
_bourgeois_ sentiments, narrow-minded, satirical sentiments; they
inoculated manly souls with contempt for such great things as one
performs disinterestedly. This disdain is a sure element of decay, and
we may regard it as an announcement of death.

Against the knights who, here and there, showed themselves unworthy and
degenerate, was put in practice the terrible apparatus of degradation.
Modern historians of chivalry have not failed to describe in detail all
the rites of this solemn punishment, and we have presented to us a scene
which is well calculated to excite the imagination of the most
matter-of-fact, and to make the most timid heart swell.

The knight judicially condemned to submit to this shame was first
conducted to a scaffold, where they broke or trod under foot all his
weapons. He saw his shield, with device effaced, turned upside down and
trailed in the mud. Priests, after reciting prayers for the vigil of the
dead, pronounced over his head the psalm, "_Deus laudem meam_," which
contains terrible maledictions against traitors. The herald of arms who
carried out this sentence took from the hands of the pursuivant of arms
a basin full of dirty water, and threw it all over the head of the
recreant knight in order to wash away the sacred character which had
been conferred upon him by the accolade. The guilty one, degraded in
this way, was subsequently thrown upon a hurdle, or upon a stretcher,
covered