omen. Bertran reproached him with having changed his lady at least a
hundred times, and he himself shamelessly confesses:

The jealousies of husbands ne'er amaze me,
For in the art of love I do excel,
And there's no wife, however chaste she may be
Who can resist me if I woo her well.
And if her husband hate me I'll not grumble,
Because his wife receives me in the night,
If mine her kiss, if mine sweet love's delight,
His pain and wrath my spirit shall not humble.
No husband e'er shall rob me of my pleasure,
None can resist me, what I wish I gain,
All do I love and never will refrain
Spite husbands' wrath to rob them of their treasure.

It may seem strange at first sight that this enthusiastic exponent of
pure love should have led such a double life. But Sordello's conduct is
not in the least paradoxical; in accordance with the tendency of the
period, he carefully distinguished in his own heart between sexuality
and love; before the one he lay prostrate, unable to find words enough
in self-depreciation, so that he might the more exalt his mistress; but
with respect to all other women he was a mere sensualist. We read that
although he was "an expert in the treatment of women" in her presence
his voice forsook him and he lost all self-control. Petrarch, who--while
living with a very earthly woman--extolled all his life long a lofty
being whom he called Laura, was akin to Sordello, although he was a far
less brutal character. The latter approached the type of the seeker of
love, the Don Juan.

In a tenzone between Peirol and the Dauphin of Auvergne, the former
maintains that love must die at the moment of its consummation. "I
cannot believe," he says, "that a true lover can continue to love after
he has received the last favour." (Otto Weininger agrees with this.) But
Peirol winds up with the subtle suggestion that though love be dead, a
man should always continue to behave as if he were still in love.

The troubadours never weary of drawing a line between _drudaria_ and
_luxuria_, pure love and base desire. _Mezura_, seemliness, is
contrasted with _dezmezura_, licentiousness. Pure love is regarded as
the creator of all high values, luxuriousness as their destroyer. In the
same way the German minnesingers distinguished between "low" love and
"high" love.

As both cultured minds and the upper classes, contemning sexuality,
acknowledged spiritual love onl