(Little star, I see thee there,
That the moon draws close to her!
Nicolette is with thee there,
My love of the yellow hair.)--

who disdains the joys of Paradise, since they exclude the joys of
loving--

En paradis qu'ai-je a faire? Je n'i quier entrer, mais que j'aie
Nicolete, ma très douce amie que j'aime tant.... Mais en enfer voil
jou aler. Car en enfer vont li bel clerc et li bel cevalier, qui
sont mort as tournois et as rices guerres, et li bien sergant, et
li franc homme.... Avec ciax voil jou aler, mais que j'aie
Nicolete, ma très douce amie, avec moi. [What have I to do in
Paradise? I seek not to enter there, so that I have Nicolette, my
most sweet friend, whom I love so well.... But to Hell will I go.
For to Hell go the fine clerks and the fine knights, who have died
in tourneys and in rich wars, and the brave soldiers and the
free-born men.... With these will I go, so that I have Nicolette,
my most sweet friend, with me.]

--Aucassin, at once brave and naïf, sensuous and spiritual, is as much
the type of the perfect medieval lover as Romeo, with his ardour and his
vitality, is of the Renaissance one. But the poem--for in spite of the
prose passages, the little work is in effect simply a poem--is not all
sentiment and dreams. With admirable art the author has interspersed
here and there contrasting episodes of realism or of absurdity; he has
woven into his story a succession of vivid dialogues, and by means of an
acute sense of observation he has succeeded in keeping his airy fantasy