A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1

  CHAPTER V

  ALLEGORY, FABLIAU, AND PROSE STORY OF COMMON LIFE

  [Sidenote: The connection with prose fiction of allegory.]

  It was shown in the last chapter that fiction, and even prose fiction,of very varied character began to develop itself in French during thethirteenth and fourteenth centuries. By the fifteenth the developmentwas very much greater, and the "disrhyming" of romances, the beginningsof which were very early, came to be a regular, not an occasional,process; while, by its latter part, verse had become not the usual, butthe exceptional vehicle of romance, and prose romances of enormouslength were popular. But earlier there had still been some obstacles inthe way of the prose novel proper. It was the period of the rise andreign of Allegory, and France, preceptress of almost all Europe in mostliterary kinds, proved herself such in this with the unparalleledexample of the _Roman de la Rose_. But the _Roman de la Rose_ was itselfin verse--the earlier part of it at least in real poetry--and most ofits innumerable imitations were in verse likewise. Moreover, thoughFrance again had been the first to receive and to turn to use the richesof Eastern apologue, the most famous example of which is _The Seven WiseMasters_, these rather serious matters do not seem to have especiallycommended themselves to the French people. The place of composition ofthe most famous of all, the _Gesta Romanorum_, has been fairly settledto be England, though the original language of composition is not likelyto have been other than Latin. At any rate, the style of seriousallegory, in prose which should also be literature, never really caughthold of the French taste.

  Comic tale-telling, on the other hand, was germane to the very soul ofthe race, and had shown itself in _chanson_ and _roman_ episodes at avery early date. But it had been so abundantly, and in so popular amanner, associated with verse as a vehicle in those pieces, in the greatbeast-epic of _Renart_, and above all in the _fabliaux_ and in theearliest farces, that the connection was hard to separate. None of thestories discussed in the last chapter has, it may be noticed, the leastcomic touch or turn.

  [Sidenote: And of the _fabliaux_.]

  As we go on we must disengage ourselves more and more (though withoccasional returns to it) from attention to verse; and the two greatcompositions in that form, the _Romance of the Rose_ and the _Story ofthe Fox_, especially the former, hardly require much writing about toany educated person. They are indeed most strongly contrasted examplesof two modes of tale-telling, both in a manner allegoric, but in otherrespects utterly different. The mere story of the _Rose_, apart from thedreamy or satiric digressions and developments of its two parts and theelaborate descriptions of the first, can be told in a page or two. Anabstract of the various _Renart_ books, to give any idea of their realcharacter, would, on the other hand, have to be nearly as long as theless spun-out versions themselves. But the verse _fabliaux_ can hardlybe passed over so lightly. Many of them formed the actual bases of theprose _nouvelles_ that succeeded them; not a few have found repeatedpresentation in literature; and, above all, they deserve the immensepraise of having deliberately introduced ordinary life, and notconventionalised manners, into literary treatment. We have taken somepains to point out touches of that life which are observable in Saint'sLife and Romance, in _chanson_ and early prose tale. But here the caseis altered. Almost everything is real; a good deal is what is called, inone of the senses of a rather misused word, downright "realism."

  Few people who have ever heard of the _fabliaux_ can need to be toldthat this realism in their case implies extreme freedom of treatment,extending very commonly to the undoubtedly coarse and not seldom to themerely dirty. There are some--most of them well known by modernimitations such as Leigh Hunt's "Palfrey"--which are quite guiltless inthis respect; but the great majority deal with the usual comic farragoof satire on women, husbands, monks, and other stock subjects ofraillery, all of which at the time invited "sculduddery." To translatesome of the more amusing, one would require not merely Chaucerianlicence of treatment but Chaucerian peculiarities of dialect in order toavoid mere vulgarity. Even Prior, who is our only modern English_fabliau_-writer of real literary merit--the work of people like HanburyWilliams and Hall Stevenson being mostly mere pornography--could hardlyhave managed such a piece as "Le Sot Chevalier"--a riotously "improper"but excessively funny example--without running the risk of losing thatrecommendation of being "a lady's book" with which Johnson rathercapriciously tempered his more general undervaluation. Sometimes, on theother hand, the joke is trivial enough, as in the English-Frenchword-play of _anel_ for _agnel_ (or _-neau_), which substitutes "donkey"for "lamb"; or, in the other, on the comparison of a proper name,"Estula," with its component syllables "es tu la?" But the importantpoint on the whole is that, proper or improper, romantic or trivial,they all exhibit a constant improvement in the mere art of telling; indiscarding of the stock phrases, the long-winded speeches, and thegeneral _paraphernalia_ of verse; in sticking and leading up smartly tothe point; in coining sharp, lively phrase; in the co-ordination ofincident and the excision of superfluities. Often they passed withoutdifficulty into direct dramatic presentation in short farces. But on thewhole their obvious destiny was to be "unrhymed" and to make theirappearance in the famous form of the _nouvelle_ or _novella_, in regardto which it is hard to say whether Italy was most indebted to Francefor substance, or France to Italy for form.

  [Sidenote: The rise of the _nouvelle_ itself.]

  It was not, however, merely the intense conservatism of the Middle Agesas to literary form which kept back the prose _nouvelle_ to such anextent that, as we have seen, only a few examples survive from the twowhole centuries between 1200 and 1400, while not one of these is of thekind most characteristic ever since, or at least until quite recentdays, of French tale-telling. The French octosyllabic couplet, in whichthe _fabliaux_ were without exception or with hardly an exceptioncomposed, can, in a long story, become very tiresome because of its wantof weight and grasp, and the temptations it offers to a weak rhymesterto stuff it with endless tags. But for a short tale in deft hands it canapply its lightness in the best fashion, and put its points with no lackof sting. The _fabliau_-writer or reciter was not required--one imaginesthat he would have found scant audiences if he had tried it--to spin along yarn; he had got to come to his jokes and his business prettyrapidly; and, as La Fontaine has shown to thousands who have neverknown--perhaps have never heard of--his early masters, he had aninstrument which would answer to his desires perfectly if only he knewhow to finger it.

  At the same time, both the lover of poetry and the lover of tale mustacknowledge that, though alliance between them is not in the least anunholy one, and has produced great and charming children, the best ofthe poetry is always a sort of extra bonus or solace to the tale, andthe tale not unfrequently seems as if it could get on better without thepoetry. The one can only aspire somewhat irrelevantly; the other cannever attain quite its full development. So it was no ill day when theprose _nouvelle_ came to its own in France.

  [Sidenote: _Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles._]

  The first remarkable collection was the famous _Cent NouvellesNouvelles_, traditionally attributed to Louis XI. when Dauphin and anexile in Brabant, with the assistance of friends and courtiers, butmore recently selected by critics that way minded as part of the baggagethey have "commandeered" for Antoine de la Salle. The question ofauthorship is of scarcely the slightest importance to us; though thepoint last mentioned is worth mentioning, because we shall have tonotice the favoured candidate in this history again. There are certainlysome of the hundred that he might have written.

  In the careless way in which literary history used to be dealt with, the_Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_ were held to be mere imitation of the_Decameron_ and other Italian things. It is, of course, much more thanprobable that the Italian _novella_ had not a little to do with theprecipitation of the French _nouvelle_ from its state of solution in the_fabliau_. But the person or persons who, in imitating the _Decameron_,produced the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_ had a great deal more to do--anddid a great
deal less--than this mere imitation of their original. Asfor a group of included tales, the already-mentioned _Seven WiseMasters_[80] was known in France much before Boccaccio's time. The titlewas indeed admittedly Italian, but such an obvious one as to require nopositive borrowing, and there is in the French book no story-frameworklike that of the plague and the country-house visit; no cheerfulpersonalities like Fiammetta or Dioneo make not merely the intervals butthe stories themselves alive with a special interest. Above all, thereis nothing like the extraordinary mixture of unity and variety--a puregift of genius--which succeeds in making the _Decameron_ a real book aswell as a bundle of narratives. Nor is there anything like the literarybrilliancy of the actual style and handling.

  Nevertheless, _Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_ is a book of great interestand value, despite serious defects due to its time generally and to itsplace in the history of fiction in particular. Its obscenity, on whicheven Sir Walter Scott, the least censorious or prudish-prurient of men,and with Southey, the great witness against false squeamishness, hasbeen severe,[81] is unfortunately undeniable. But it is to be doubtedwhether Sir Walter knew much of the _fabliaux_; if he had he would haveseen first, that this sort of thing had become an almost indispensablefashion in the short story, and secondly, that there is hereconsiderable improvement on the _fabliaux_ themselves, there being muchless mere schoolboy crudity of dirty detail and phrase, though thesituations may remain the same. It suffers occasionally from the heavyand rhetorical style which beset all European literature (exceptItalian, which itself did not wholly escape) in the fifteenth century.But still one can see in it that improvement of narrative method anddiction which has been referred to: and occasionally, amid the crowd oftricky wives, tricked husbands, too obliging and too hardly treatedchambermaids, ribald priests and monks, and the like, one comes acrossquite different things and persons, which are, as the phrase goes,almost startlingly modern, with a mixture of the _un_modern heighteningthe appeal. One of the most striking of these--not very likely to bedetected or suspected by a careless reader under its sub-title of "LaDemoiselle Cavaliere," and by no means fully summarised in the quaintshort argument which is in all cases subjoined--may be briefly analysed.

  [Sidenote: Analysis of "La Demoiselle Cavaliere".]

  In one of the great baronial households of Brabant there lived, afterthe usual condition of gentle servitude, a youth named Gerard, who fellin love, after quite honourable and seemly fashion, with Katherine, thedaughter of the house--a fact which, naturally, they thought known onlyto themselves, when, as naturally, everybody in the Court had becomeaware of it. "For the better prevention of scandal," an immediatemarriage being apparently out of the question because of Gerard'sinferiority in rank to his mistress, it is decided by the interventionof friends that Gerard shall take his leave of the Brabantine "family."There is a parting of the most laudable kind, in which Katherinebestows on her lover a ring, and a pledge that she will never marry anyone else, and he responds suitably. Then he sets out, and on arriving atBar has no difficulty in establishing himself in another greathousehold. Katherine meanwhile is beset with suitors of the best rankand fortune; but will have nothing to say to any of them, till one daycomes the formidable moment when a mediaeval father determines that hisdaughter shall marry a certain person, will she nill she. But ifmediaeval fatherhood was arbitrary, mediaeval religion was supreme, anda demand to go on pilgrimage before an important change of life couldhardly be refused. In fact, the parents, taking the proposal as a merepreliminary of obedience, consent joyfully, and offer a splendid suiteof knights and damsels, "Nous lui baillerons ung tel gentilhomme et unetelle demoiselle, Ysabeau et Marguerite et Jehanneton." But "no," saysMistress Katherine sagely. The road to St. Nicolas of Warengeville isnot too safe for people travelling with a costly outfit and a train ofwomen. Let her, dressed as a man, and a bastard uncle of hers (who isevidently the "Will Wimble" of the house) go quietly on little horses,and it will save time, trouble, money, and danger. This the innocentparents consider to show "great sense and good will," and the pair startin German dress--Katherine as master, the uncle as man,--comfortably,too, as one may imagine (for uncles and nieces generally get on welltogether, and the bend sinister need do no harm). They accomplish theirpilgrimage (a touch worth noticing in Katherine's character), and thenonly does she reveal her plan to her companion. She tells him, notwithout a little bribery, that she wants to go and see Gerard _enBarrois_, and to stay there for a short time; but he is to have no doubtof her keeping her honour safe. He consents, partly with an eye to thefuture main chance (for she is her father's sole heir), and partlybecause _elle est si bonne qu'il n'y fault guere guet sur elle_.Katherine, taking the name of Conrad, finds the place, presents herselfto the _maitre_ _d'ostel_, an ancient squire, as desirous ofentertainment or _re_tainment, and is very handsomely received. Afterdinner and due service done to the master, the old squire having heardthat Katherine--Conrad--is of Brabant, naturally introduces hercountryman Gerard to her. He does not in the least recognise her, andwhat strikes her as stranger, neither during their own dinner nor aftersays a word about Brabant itself. Conrad is regularly admitted toMonseigneur's service, and, as a countryman, is to share Gerard's room.They are perfectly good friends, go to see their horses together, etc.,but still the formerly passionate lover says not a word of Brabant orhis Brabanconian love, and poor Katherine concludes that she has been"put with forgotten sins"--not a bad phrase, though it might bemisconstrued. Being, however, as has been already seen, both a pluckygirl and a clever one, she determines to carry her part through. Atlast, when they go to their respective couches in the same chamber, sheherself faces the subject, and asks him if he knows any persons inBrabant. "Oh yes." "Does he know" her own father, his former master?"Yes." "They say," said she, "that there are pretty girls there: did younot know any?" "Precious few," quoth he, "and I cared nothing aboutthem. Do let me go to sleep! I am dead tired." "What!" said she, "canyou sleep when there is talk of pretty girls? _You_ are not much of alover." But he slept "like a pig."

  Nevertheless, Katherine does not give up hope, though the next daythings are much the same, Gerard talking of nothing but hounds andhawks, Conrad of pretty girls. At last the visitor declares that he[she] does not care for the Barrois, and will go back to Brabant. "Why?"says Gerard, "what better hunting, etc., can you get there than here?""It has nothing," says Conrad, "like the women of Brabant," adding, inreply to a jest of his, an ambiguous declaration that she is actually inlove. "Then why did you leave her?" says Gerard--about the firstsensible word he has uttered. She makes a fiery answer as to Lovesometimes banishing from his servants all sense and reason. But for thetime the subject again drops. It is, however, reopened at night, andsome small pity comes on one for the recreant Gerard, inasmuch as shekeeps him awake by wailing about her love. At last she "draws" thesluggard to some extent. "Has not _he_ been in love, and does not heknow all about it? But he was never such a fool as Conrad, and he issure that Conrad's lady is not such either." Another try, and she getsthe acknowledgment of treason out of him. He tells her (what she knowstoo well) how he loved a noble damsel in Brabant and had to leave her,and it really annoyed him for a few days (it is good to imagineKatherine's face, even in the dark, at this), though of course he neverlost his appetite or committed any folly of that sort. But he knew hisOvid (he tells her), and as soon as he came to Bar he made love to apretty girl there who was quite amiable to him, and now he never thinksof the other. There is more talk, and Katherine insists that he shallintroduce her to his new lady, that she may try this remedy ofcounter-love. He consents with perfect nonchalance, and is at lastallowed to go to sleep. No details are given of the conversation withthe rival,[82] except the bitterness of Katherine's heart at the fact,and at seeing the ring she had given to Gerard on his hand. This sheactually has the pluck to play with, and, securing it, to slip on herown. But the man being obviously past praying or caring for, shearranges with her uncle to depart early in the morning, writes a lettertelling Gerard of t
he whole thing and renouncing him, passes the nightsilently, leaves the letter, rises quietly and early, and departs, yet"weeping tenderly," not for the man, but for her own lost love. The pairreach home safely, and says the tale-teller, with an agreeable drynessoften found here,[83] "There were some who asked them the adventures oftheir journey, but whatever they answered they did not boast of thechief one." The conclusion is so spirited and at the very end so scenicand even modern (or, much better, universal), that it must be given indirect translation, with a few _chevilles_ (or pieces of padding) leftout.

  As for Gerard, when he woke and found his companion gone, he thought it must be late, jumped up in haste, and seized his jerkin: but, as he thrust his hand in one of the sleeves, there dropped out a letter which surprised him, for he certainly did not remember having put any there. He picked it up and saw it subscribed "To the disloyal Gerard." If he was startled before he was more so now: but he opened it at last, and saw the signature "Katherine, surnamed Conrad." Even yet he knew not what to think of it: but as he read the blood rose to his face and his heart fluttered, and his whole manner was changed. Still, he read it through, and learnt how his disloyalty had come to the knowledge of her who had wished him so well; and that not at second hand, but from himself to herself; what trouble she had taken to find him; and how (which stung him most) he had slept three nights in her company after all. [_After thinking some time he decides to follow her, and arrives in Brabant on the very day of her marriage: for she has, in the circumstances, kept her word to her parents._] Then he tried to go up to her and salute her, and make some wretched excuse for his fault. But he was not allowed, for she turned her shoulder on him, and he could never manage to speak to her all through the day. He even stepped forward once to lead her out to dance, but she refused him flatly before all the company, many of whom heard her. And immediately afterwards another gentleman came, who bade the minstrels strike up, and she stepped down from her dais in full view of Gerard and went to dance with him. And so did the disloyal lover lose his lady.

  Now whether this, as the book asserts and as is not at all improbable,is a true story or not, cannot matter to any sensible person onefarthing. What does matter is that it is a by no means badly told story,that it resorts to no illegitimate sources or seasonings of interest,and that it offers opportunities for amplification and "diversity ofadministration" to almost any extent. One can fancy it told, at muchgreater length and with more or less adjustment to different times, bygreat novelists of the most widely varying classes--by Scott and byDumas, by Charles Reade and by George Meredith, to mention no livingwriter, as might easily be done. Both hero and heroine have morecharacter between them than you could extract out of fifty of the usual_nouvelles_, and each lends him or herself to endless furtherdevelopment. Not a few of the separate scenes--the good parents fussingover their daughter's intended cavalcade and her thrifty and ingeniousobjections; the journey of the uncle and niece (any of the first threeof the great novelists mentioned above would have made chapters ofthis); the dramatic and risky passages at the castle _en Barrois_; thecontrast of Katherine's passion and Gerard's sluggishness; and thefashion in which this latter at once brings on the lout's defeat andsaves the lady from danger at his hands--all this is novel-matter ofalmost the first class as regards incident, with no lack ofcharacter-openings to boot. Nor could anybody want a better "curtain"than the falling back of the scorned and baffled false lover, theconcert of the minstrels, and Katherine's stately stepping down the daisto complete the insult by dancing with another.

  [Sidenote: The interest of _named_ personages.]

  One more general point may be noticed in connection with the superiorityof this story, and that is the accession of interest, at first sighttrivial but really important, which comes from the _naming_ of thepersonages. Both in the earlier _fabliaux_ and in these _Nouvelles_themselves, by far the larger number of the actors are simply called byclass-names--a "knight," a "damsel," a "merchant and his wife," a"priest," a "varlet." It may seem childish to allow the mere addition ofa couple of names like Gerard and Katherine to make this difference ofinterest, but the fact is that there is a good deal of childishness inhuman nature, and especially in the enjoyment of story.[84] Only byvery slow degrees were writers of fiction to learn the great differencethat small matters of this kind make, and how the mere "anecdote," thedry argument or abstract of incident, can be amplified, varied,transformed from a remainder biscuit to an abundant and almostinexhaustible feast, by touches of individual character, setting ofinteriors, details of conversation, description, nomenclature, and whatnot. Quite early, as we saw in the case of the _St. Alexis_, persons ofnarrative gift stumbled upon things of the kind; but it was only afterlong delays, and hints of many half-conscious kinds, that they becamepart of recognised craft. Even with such a master of that craft asBoccaccio before them, not all the Italian novelists could catch thepattern; and the French, perhaps naturally enough, were slower still.

  It must be remembered, in judging the fifteenth-century French tale,that just as it was to some extent hampered by the long continuingpopularity of the verse _fabliau_ on the one hand, so it was, as we maysay, "bled" on the other by the growing popularity of the farce, whichconsists of exactly the same material as the _fabliaux_ and the_nouvelles_ themselves, with the additional liveliness of voice andaction. These later additions imposed not the smallest restraint on thelicense which had characterised and was to characterise the plain verseand prose forms,[85] and no doubt the result was all the more welcome tothe taste of the time. But for that very reason the appetites andtastes, which could glut themselves with the full dramaticrepresentation, might care less for the mere narrative, on the famousprinciple of _segnius irritant_. Nor was the political state of Franceduring the time very favourable to letters. There are, however, twoseparate fifteenth-century stories which deserve notice. One of them isthe rather famous, though probably not widely read, _Petit Jehan deSaintre_ of the already mentioned Antoine de la Salle, a certain workof his this time. The other is the pleasant, though to Englishmenintentionally uncomplimentary, _Jehan de Paris_ of an unknown writer. LaSalle's book must belong to the later middle of the century, though, ifhe died in or about 1461, not to a very late middle. _Jehan de Paris_has been put by M. de Montaiglon nearer the close.

  [Sidenote: _Petit Jehan de Saintre._]

  The history of "little John of Saintre and the Lady of the BeautifulCousins"[86] has not struck all judges, even all English judges,[87] inthe same way. Some have thought it mawkish, rhetorical, clumsilyimitative of the manners of dead chivalry, and the like. Others,admitting it to be a late and "literary" presentation of the statelysociety it describes, rank it much higher as such. Its author was abitter enough satirist if he wrote, as he most probably did, the famous_Quinze Joyes de Mariage_, one of the most unmitigated pieces ofunsweetened irony--next to _A Tale of a Tub_ and _Jonathan Wild_--to befound in literature; but not couched in narrative form. The same qualityappears of course in the still more famous farce of _Pathelin_, whichfew good judges deny very stoutly to him, though there is littlepositive evidence. In the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_ again, as has beensaid, he certainly had a hand, and possibly a great hand, as well asperhaps elsewhere. The satiric touch appears even in _Petit Jehan_itself; for, after all the gracious courtship of the earlier part, the_dame des belles Cousines_, during an absence of her lover on service,falls a by no means, as it would seem, very reluctant victim to thevulgar viciousness of a rich churchman, just like the innominatas of the_nouvelles_ themselves. But the earlier part _is_ gracious--a wordspecifically and intensively applicable to it. It may be a littleunreal; does not the secondary form and sense which has been fastenedupon reality--"realism"--show that, in the opinion of many people atleast, reality is _not_ gracious? The Foozles of this world who "despiseall your kickshaws," the Dry-as-dusts who point out--not in the leastseeing the real drift of their ar
gument--that the fifteenth century was,in the greater part of Europe if not the whole, at a new point of moralsand manners, may urge these things. But the best part of _Petit Jehan_remains a gracious sort of dream for gracious dreamers--a picture of akind of Utopia of Feminism, when Feminism did not mean votes or anythingfoolish, but only adoration of the adorable.

  [Sidenote: _Jehan de Paris._]

  It would be impossible to find or even to imagine anything moredifferent than the not much later _Jehan de Paris_, an evidentfolk-tale[88] of uncertain origin, which very quickly became a popularchapbook and lasted long in that condition. Although we Englishmenprovide the fun, he is certainly no Englishman who resents the fact orfails to enjoy the result, not to mention that we "could tell them taleswith other endings." It is, for instance, not quite historicallydemonstrable that in crossing a river many English horsemen would belikely to be drowned, while all the French cavaliers got safe through;nor that, in scouring a country, the Frenchmen would score all the gameand all the best beasts and poultry, while the English bag would consistof starvelings and offal. But no matter for that. The actual tale tells(with the agreeable introductory "How," which has not yet lost its zestfor the right palates in chapter-headings) the story of a King and Queenof Spain who have, in recompense for help given them against turbulentbarons, contracted their daughter to the King of France for his son; howthey forgot this later, and betrothed her to the King of England, andhow that King set out with his train, through France itself, to fetchhis bride. As soon as the Dauphin (now king, for his father is dead)hears of their coming, he disguises himself under the name of John ofParis, with a splendid train of followers, much more gorgeous than theEnglish (the "foggy islander" of course cannot make this out), and setsof _quiproquos_ follow, in each of which the Englishman is outdone andbaffled generally, till at last "John of Paris" enters Burgos in state,reveals himself, and carries off the Englishman's bride, with thenatural effect of making him _bien marry et courrouce_, though no fightcomes off.

  The tale is smartly and succinctly told (there are not many more than ahundred of the small-sized and large-printed pages of the _CollectionJannet-Picard_), and there is a zest and _verve_ about it which ought toplease any mood that is for the time in harmony with the much talked ofComic Spirit. But it certainly does not lose attraction, and it ascertainly does not fail to lend some, when it is considered side by sidewith the other "John," especially if both are again compared with thecertainly not earlier and probably later "Prose Romances" in English, towhich that rather ambitious title was given by Mr. Thoms. There isnothing in these in the very remotest degree resembling _Jehan deSaintre_: you must get on to the _Arcadia_ or at least to _Euphues_before you come anywhere near that. There is, on the other hand, in ourstuff, a sort of distant community of spirit with _Jehan de Paris_; butit works in an altogether lower and less imaginative sphere and fashion;no sense of art being present, and very little of craft. It isastonishing that a language which had had, if only in verse, such anunsurpassable tale-teller as Chaucer, should have been so backward. Butthen the whole conditions of the fifteenth century, especially inEngland, become only the more puzzling the longer one studies them. Evenin France, it will be observed, the output of Tale is by no meanslarge.[89] Nor shall we find it very greatly increased even in the nextage, though there is one masterpiece in quantity as well as quality.But, for our purpose, the _Cent Nouvelles_ and the two separate piecesjust discussed continue, and in more and more striking manner, to showthe vast possibilities when the way shall have been clearly found andthe feet of the wayfarers firmly set in it.

  FOOTNOTES:

  [80] Prose as well as verse.

  [81] In the very delightful imaginative introduction to _QuentinDurward_.

  [82] This is one of the points which a modern novelist would certainlyhave seized; but whether to advantage or not is another question.

  [83] And of course recognised by the "Antonians" as peculiar to LaSalle.

  [84] Only contrast "_Tom, Tom_, the piper's son," with "_There was once_a piper's son," or think how comparatively uninteresting the enormitiesof another hero or not-hero would have been if he had been anonymousinstead of being called "Georgy-Porgy Pudding-and-Pie!" ["Puddenum" is,or used to be, the preferred if corrupt nursery form.] In more elaborateand adorned narrative the influence, not merely of the name but of thebeautiful name, comes in, and that of the name itself remains. In thattragic story of Ludlow Castle which was given above (Chap. iv. pp.84-6), something, for the present writer at least, would have been lostif the traitor had been merely "a knight" instead of Sir Ernault Lisleand the victim merely "a damsel" instead of Marion de la Briere. Andwould the _bocca bacciata_ of Alaciel itself be as gracious if it wasmerely anybody's?

  [85] The amazing farce-insets of Lyndsay's _Satire of the Three Estates_could be paralleled, and were no doubt suggested, by French farces ofolder date.

  [86] Nobody seems to be entirely certain what this odd title means:though there have been some obvious and some far-fetched guesses. But ithas, like other _rhetoriqueur_ names of 1450-1550, such as "Traverser ofPerilous Ways" and the like, a kind of fantastic attraction for somepeople.

  [87] If I remember rightly, my friend the late R. L. Stevenson was wontto abuse it.

  [88] As such, the substance is found in other languages. But the Frenchitself has been traced by some to an earlier _roman d'aventure_, _Blonded'Oxford_, in which an English heiress is carried off by a Frenchsquire.

  [89] Perhaps one should guard against a possible repetition of a notuncommon critical mistake--that of inferring ignorance from absence ofmention. I am quite aware that no exhaustive catalogue of known Frenchstories in prose has been given; and the failure to supplement a formerglance at the late prose versions of romance is intentional. They havenothing new in romance-, still less in novel-_character_ for us. The_Bibliotheque Elzevirienne_ volumes have been dwelt upon, not as a_corpus_, but because they appear to represent, without any unfairmanipulation or "window-dressing," the kind at the time with aremarkable combination of interest both individual and contrasted.