he press, and charged home again, sword
in hand." For that hour Aucassin struck like one of Mallory's men in the
best of all romances. But though he took Count Bougars prisoner, his
father would not keep his word, nor let him have one word or two with
Nicolette, and one kiss. Nay, Aucassin was thrown into prison in an old
tower. There he sang of Nicolette,

"Was it not the other day
That a pilgrim came this way?
And a passion him possessed,
That upon his bed he lay,
Lay, and tossed, and knew no rest,
In his pain discomforted.
But thou camest by his bed,
Holding high thine amice fine
And thy kirtle of ermine.
Then the beauty that is thine
Did he look on; and it fell
That the Pilgrim straight was well,
Straight was hale and comforted.
And he rose up from his bed,
And went back to his own place
Sound and strong, and fair of face."

Thus Aucassin makes a Legend of his lady, as it were, assigning to her
beauty such miracles as faith attributes to the excellence of the saints.

Meanwhile, Nicolette had slipped from the window of her prison chamber,
and let herself down into the garden, where she heard the song of the
nightingales. "Then caught she up her kirtle in both hands, behind and
before, and flitted over the dew that lay deep on the grass, and fled out
of the garden, and the daisy flowers bending below her tread seemed dark
against her feet, so white was the maiden." Can't you see her stealing
with those "feet of ivory," like Bombyca's, down the dark side of the
silent moonlit streets of Beaucaire?

Then she came where Aucassin was lamenting in his cell, and she whispered
to him how she was fleeing for her life. And he answered that without
her he must die; and then this foolish pair, in the very mouth of peril,
must needs begin a war of words as to which loved the other best!

"Nay, fair sweet friend," saith Aucassin, "it may not be that thou lovest
me more than I love thee. Woman may not love man as man loves woman, for
a woman's love lies no deeper than in the glance of her eye, and the
blossom of her breast, and her foot's tip-toe; but man's love is in his
heart planted, whence never can it issue forth and pass away."

So while they speak

"In debate as birds are,
Hawk on bough,"

comes the kind sentinel to warn them of a danger. And Nicolette flees,
and leaps into the fosse, and thence escapes into a great forest and
lonely. In the mo