bsorbed all his thoughts,
for he found time to read many books, to write many poems, to be madly
enamoured of a lovely unknown person who did not respond to his
passion,[455] to marry "Domicella" or "Damoiselle" Philippa, attached to
the service of the queen, then to the service of Constance, second wife
of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster--without ceasing however, because he
could not, as he assures us, do otherwise, still to love his unknown
beauty.[456]

He reads, he loves, he writes, he is a poet. We do not know whom he
loved, but we know what he read and what he wrote at that time. He read
the works which were in fashion in the elegant society he lived among:
romances of chivalry, love-songs, allegorical poems, from "Roland" and
"Tristan" to the "Roman de la Rose." Poets, even the greatest, rarely
show their originality at twenty, and Chaucer was no exception to the
rule; he imitated the writings best liked by those around him, which, at
the Court of the king, were mostly French books. However it might be
with the nation, the princes had remained French; the French language
was their native tongue; the beautiful books, richly illustrated, that
they kept to divert themselves with on dull days, in their
"withdrawing-room," or "chambre de retrait," were French books, of which
the subject for the most part was love. In this respect there was, even
at that time, no difference between the north and the south. Froissart
stays at Orthez, in 1388, with Monseigneur Gaston Phebus de Foix; and at
Eltham, at the Court of Richard II. in 1394. In each case he uses
exactly the same endeavours to please: both personages are men of the
same kind, having the same ideal in life, imbued with the same notions,
and representing the same civilisation. He finds them both speaking
French very well; Gaston "talked to me, not in his own Gascon, but in
fair and good French"; Richard, too, "full well spoke and read French."
The historian was duly recommended to each of them, but he relied
especially, to make himself welcome, on a present he had brought, the
same in both cases, a French manuscript containing amorous poems, which
manuscript "the Comte de Foix saw full willingly; and every night, after
his supper, I read to him from it. But in reading none durst speak nor
say a word; for he wanted me to be well heard."

He takes the same precautions when he goes to England, where he had not
been seen for a quarter of a century, and where he scarc