_; _e.g._, p. 524 B,
_et sachiez que voirs estait_, _i.e._ _et sachez que c'etait vrai_. We
still find _ester_, to stand ("_Et ne pooit ester sur ses pieds_," "He
could not stand on his legs"). At present the French have no single word
for "standing," which has often been pointed out as a real defect of the
language. "To stand" is _ester_, in Joinville; "to be" is _estre_.

In the grammatical system of the language of Joinville we find the
connecting link between the case terminations of the classical Latin and
the prepositions and articles of modern French. It is generally supposed
that the terminations of the Latin declension were lost in French, and
that the relations of the cases were expressed by prepositions, while the
_s_ as the sign of the plural was explained by the _s_ in the nom. plur.
of nouns of the third declension. But languages do not thus advance _per
saltum_. They change slowly and gradually, and we can generally discover
in what is, some traces of what has been.

Now the fact is that in ancient French, and likewise in Provencal, there
is still a system of declension more or less independent of prepositions.
There are, so to say, three declensions in old French, of which the second
is the most important and the most interesting. If we take a Latin word
like _annus_, we find in old French two forms in the singular, and two in
the plural. We find sing. _an-s_, _an_, plur. _an_, _ans_. If _an_ occurs
in the nom. sing. or as the subject, it is always _ans_; if it occur as a
gen., dat., or acc., it is always _an_. In the plural, on the contrary, we
find in the nom. _an_, and in all the oblique cases _ans_. The origin of
this system is clear enough, and it is extraordinary that attempts should
have been made to derive it from German or even from Celtic, when the
explanation could be found so much nearer home. The nom. sing. has the
_s_, because it was there in Latin; the nom. plur. has no _s_, because
there was no _s_ there in Latin. The oblique cases in the singular have no
_s_, because the accusative in Latin, and likewise the gen., dat., and
abl., ended either in vowels, which became mute, or in _m_, which was
dropped. The oblique cases in the plural had the _s_, because it was there
in the acc. plur., which became the general oblique case, and likewise in
the dat. and abl. By means of these fragments of the Latin declension, it
was possible to express many things without prepositions which in modern
Fren