society was false and base and merciless
became a form of "renardie," and by "renardie" the whole world seemed
to be ruled. Such is the temper expressed in _Le Couronnement Renard_,
written in Flanders soon after 1250, a satire directed chiefly against
the mendicant orders, in which the fox, turned friar for a season,
ascends the throne. _Renard le Nouveau_, the work of a poet of Lille,
Jacquemart Gelee, nearly half a century later, represents again the
triumph of the spirit of evil; although far inferior in execution
to the _Judgment_, it had remarkable success, to which the allegory,
wearying to a modern reader, no doubt contributed at a time when
allegory was a delight. The last of the Renard romances, _Renard le
Contrefait_, was composed at Troyes before 1328, by an ecclesiastic
who had renounced his profession and turned to trade. In his leisure
hours he spun, in discipleship to Jean de Meun, his interminable poem,
which is less a romance than an encyclopaedia of all the knowledge
and all the opinions of the author. This latest _Renard_ has a value
akin to that of the second part of _Le Roman de la Rose_; it is a
presentation of the ideas and manners of the time by one who freely
criticised and mocked the powers that be, both secular and sacred,
and who was in sympathy with a certain movement or tendency towards
social, political, and intellectual reform.

III
FABLIAUX

The name _fabliaux_ is applied to short versified tales, comic in
character, and intended rather for recitation than for song. Out of
a far larger number about one hundred and fifty have survived. The
earliest--_Richeut_--is of the year 1159. From the middle of the
twelfth century, together with the heroic or sentimental poetry of
feudalism, we find this bourgeois poetry of realistic observation;
and even in the _chansons de geste_, in occasional comic episodes,
something may be seen which is in close kinship with the fabliaux.
Many brief humorous stories, having much in common under their various
disguises, exist as part of the tradition of many lands and peoples.
The theory which traces the French fabliaux to Indian originals is
unproved, and indeed is unnecessary. The East, doubtless,
contributed its quota to the common stock, but so did other quarters
of the globe; such tales are ubiquitous and are undying, only the
particular form which they assume being determined by local
conditions.

The fabliaux, as we can study them, belong especial