in touch with actual things. The description of Nicolette, escaping from
her prison, and stepping out over the grass in her naked feet, with the
daisies, as she treads on them, showing black against her whiteness, is
a wonderful example of his power of combining imagination with detail,
beauty with truth. Together with the _Chanson de Roland_--though in such
an infinitely different style--_Aucassin et Nicolete_ represents the
most valuable elements in the French poetry of this early age.

With the thirteenth century a new development began, and one of the
highest importance--the development of Prose. _La Conquête de
Constantinople_, by VILLEHARDOUIN, written at the beginning of the
century, is the earliest example of those historical memoirs which were
afterwards to become so abundant in French literature; and it is
written, not in the poetical prose of _Aucassin et Nicolete_, but in the
simple, plain style of straightforward narrative. The book cannot be
ranked among the masterpieces; but it has the charm of sincerity and
that kind of pleasant flavour which belong to innocent antiquity. The
good old Villehardouin has something of the engaging _naïveté_,
something of the romantic curiosity, of Herodotus. And in spite of the
sobriety and dryness of his writing he can, at moments, bring a sense of
colour and movement into his words. His description of the great fleet
of the crusaders, starting from Corfu, has this fine sentence: 'Et le
jour fut clair et beau: et le vent doux et bon. Et ils laissèrent aller
les voiles au vent.' His account of the spectacle of Constantinople,
when it appeared for the first time to the astonished eyes of the
Christian nobles, is well known: 'Ils ne pouvaient croire que si riche
ville pût être au monde, quand ils virent ces hauts murs et ces riches
tours dont elle était close tout autour à la ronde, et ces riches palais
et ces hautes églises.... Et sachez qu'il n'y eut si hardi à qui la
chair ne frémit; et ce ne fut une merveille; car jamais si grande