e reverencing of all women for the love of
one. It meant bravery and good manners. It meant something else. To be
first in the field and last in the retreat was necessary not merely for
valor's sake, but because courage was the surest token to a lady's favor,
which favor fidelity could alone retain. Hitherto men had been bold,
chivalry made them true. It made them constant for constancy's sake,
because inconstancy meant forfeiture of honor and any forfeiture
degradation.

When that occurred the spurs of the knight were hacked from his heels, a
ceremony overwhelming in the simplicity with which it proclaimed him
unfit to ride and therefore for chivalry.

Yet though a man might not be false to any one, to some one he must be
true. If he knew how to break a lance but not how to win a lady he was
less a knight than a churl. "A knight," said Sir Tristram, "can never be
of prowess unless he be a lover." "Why," said the belle Isaud to Sir
Dinadan, "are you a knight and not a lover? You cannot be a goodly knight
except you are?" "Jesu merci," Sir Dinadan replied. "Pleasure of love
lasts but a moment, pain of love endures alway."

Sir Dinadan was right, but so was Sir Tristram, so was the belle Isaud. A
knight had to be brave, he had to be loyal and courteous in war, as in
peace. But he had to be also a lover and as a lover he had to be true.

"L'ordre demande nette vie
Chastete et curtesye."

The demand was new to the world. Intertwisting with the silver thread
which chivalry drew in and in throughout the Middle Ages, it became the
basis of whatever is noble in love to-day. The sheen of that thread,
otherwise dazzling, shines still in Froissart and in Monstrelet, as it
must have shone in the tournaments, where, in glittering mail, men dashed
in the lists while the air was rent with women's names and, at each
achievement, the heralds shouted "Loyaute aux Dames," who, in their
tapestried galleries, were judges of the jousts.

Dazzling there it must have been entrancing in the halls and courts of the
great keeps where knights and ladies, pages and girls, going up and down,
talked but of arms and amours, or at table sat together, two by two, in
hundreds, with one trencher to each couple, feasting to the high
flourishes of trumpets and later knelt while she who for the occasion had
been chosen Royne de la Beaulte et des Amours, awarded the prizes of the
tourney, falcons, girdles or girls.

Life then was sufficientl