eauty of
her they served in vaunting challenges towards the enemy. Thus in the
middle of a keen skirmish at Cherbourg, the squadrons remained
motionless, while one knight challenged to a single combat the most
amorous of the adversaries. Such a defiance was soon accepted, and the
battle only recommenced when one of the champions had lost his life for
his love.[770] In the first campaign of Edward's war some young English
knights wore a covering over one eye, vowing, for the sake of their
ladies, never to see with both till they should have signalized their
prowess in the field.[771] These extravagances of chivalry are so common
that they form part of its general character, and prove how far a course
of action which depends upon the impulses of sentiment may come to
deviate from common sense.

It cannot be presumed that this enthusiastic veneration, this
devotedness in life and death, were wasted upon ungrateful natures. The
goddesses of that idolatry knew too well the value of their worshippers.
There has seldom been such adamant about the female heart, as can resist
the highest renown for valour and courtesy, united with the steadiest
fidelity. "He loved," says Froissart of Eustace d'Auberthicourt, "and
afterwards married lady Isabel, daughter of the count of Juliers. This
lady too loved lord Eustace for the great exploits in arms which she
heard told of him, and she sent him horses and loving letters, which
made the said lord Eustace more bold than before, and he wrought such
feats of chivalry, that all in his company were gainers."[772] It were
to be wished that the sympathy of love and valour had always been as
honourable. But the morals of chivalry, we cannot deny, were not pure.
In the amusing fictions which seem to have been the only popular reading
of the middle ages, there reigns a licentious spirit, not of that
slighter kind which is usual in such compositions, but indicating a
general dissoluteness in the intercourse of the sexes. This has often
been noticed of Boccaccio and the early Italian novelists; but it
equally characterized the tales and romances of France, whether metrical
or in prose, and all the poetry of the Troubadours.[773] The violation
of marriage vows passes in them for an incontestable privilege of the
brave and the fair; and an accomplished knight seems to have enjoyed as
undoubted prerogatives, by general consent of opinion, as were claimed
by the brilliant courtiers of Louis XV.

[Siden