as seen among the flowers of the garden one rose-bud on which
he fixes special desires. The thorns keep him off; and Love, having
him at vantage, empties the right-hand quiver on him. He yields
himself prisoner, and a dialogue between captive and captor follows.
Love locks his heart with a gold key; and after giving him a long
sermon on his duties, illustrated from the Round Table romances and
elsewhere, vanishes, leaving him in no little pain, and still unable
to get at the Rose. Suddenly in his distress there appears to him

"Un valet buen et avenant
Bel-Acueil se faisoit clamer,"

and it seems that he was the son of Courtesy.

[Footnote 145: _Vilenie_ is never an easy word to translate: it means
general misconduct and disagreeable behaviour.]

[Sidenote: _"Danger."_]

Bialacoil (to give him his Chaucerian[146] Englishing) is most
obliging, and through his help the Lover has nearly reached the Rose,
when an ugly personage named Danger in turn makes his appearance. Up
to this time there is no very important difficulty in the
interpretation of the allegory; but the learned are not at one as to
what "Danger" means. The older explanation, and the one to which I
myself still incline as most natural and best suiting what follows, is
that Danger is the representative of the beloved one's masculine and
other guardians--her husband, father, brother, mother, and so forth.
Others, however, see in him only subjective obstacles--the coyness, or
caprice, or coquettishness of the Beloved herself. But these never
troubled a true lover to any great extent; and besides they seem to
have been provided for by the arrows in the left hand of Love's
bow-bearer, and by Shame (_v. infra_). At any rate Danger's
proceedings are of a most kill-joy nature. He starts from his
hiding-place--

"Grans fu, et noirs et hericies,
S'ot les iex rouges comme feus,
Le nes froncie, le vis hideus,
Et s'escrie comme forcenes."

[Footnote 146: I am well aware of everything that has been said about
and against the Chaucerian authorship of the English _Rose_. But until
the learned philologists who deny that authorship in whole or in part
agree a little better among themselves, they must allow literary
critics at least to suspend their judgment.]

He abuses Bialacoil for bringing the Lover to the Rose, and turns the
Lover out of the park, while Bialacoil flies.

[Sidenote: _"Reason."_]

To the disconsolate suitor appears Reas