ainst her feet; the girl was so
white!

"She came to the garden-gate and opened it, and walked through the
streets of Beaucaire, keeping on the dark side of the way to avoid the
light of the moon, which shone quietly in the sky. She walked as fast as
she could, until she came to the tower where Aucassin was. The tower was
set about with pillars, here and there. She pressed herself against one
of the pillars, wrapped herself closely in her mantle, and putting her
face to a chink of the tower, which was old and ruined, she heard
Aucassin crying bitterly within, and when she had listened awhile she
began to speak."

But scattered up and down through this lighter matter, always tinged
with humour and often passing into burlesque, which makes up the general
substance of the piece, there are morsels of a different quality,
touches of some intenser sentiment, coming it would seem from the
profound and energetic spirit of the Provencal poetry itself, to which
the inspiration of the book has been referred. Let me gather up these
morsels of deeper colour, these expressions of the ideal intensity of
love, the motive which really unites together the fragments of the
little composition. Dante, the perfect flower of ideal love, has
recorded how the tyranny of that "Lord of terrible aspect" became
actually physical, blinding his senses, and suspending his bodily
forces. In this Dante is but the central expression and type of
experiences known well enough to the initiated, in that passionate age.
Aucassin represents this ideal intensity of passion--

Aucassin, li biax, li blons,
Li gentix, li amorous;

the slim, tall, debonair figure, dansellon, as the singers call him,
with curled yellow hair, and eyes of vair, who faints with love, as
Dante fainted, who rides all day through the forest in search of
Nicolette, while the thorns tear his flesh, so that one night have
traced him by the blood upon the grass, and who weeps at evening because
he has not found her--who has the malady of his love, so that he
neglects all knightly duties. Once he is induced to put himself at the
head of his people, that they, seeing him before them, might have more
heart to defend themselves; then a song relates how the sweet, grave
figure goes forth to battle, in dainty, tight-laced armour. It is the
very image of the Provencal love-god, no longer a child, but grown to
pensive youth, as Pierre Vidal met him, riding on a white horse, fair as
the morn