makes Aucassin "mightily and knightly hurl through the press," like one
of Malory's men. His hero must be a man of his hands, no mere sighing
youth incapable of arms. But the minstrels heart is in other things, for
example, in the verses where Aucassin transfers to Beauty the
wonder-working powers of Holiness, and makes the sight of his lady heal
the palmer, as the shadow of the Apostle, falling on the sick people,
healed them by the Gate Beautiful. The Flight of Nicolete is a familiar
and beautiful picture, the daisy flowers look black in the ivory
moonlight against her feet, fair as Bombyca's "feet of carven ivory" in
the Sicilian idyll, long ago. {4} It is characteristic of the poet that
the two lovers begin to wrangle about which loves best, in the very mouth
of danger, while Aucassin is yet in prison, and the patrol go down the
moonlit street, with swords in their hands, sworn to slay Nicolete. That
is the place and time chosen for this ancient controversy. Aucassin's
threat that if he loses Nicolete he will not wait for sword or knife, but
will dash his head against a wall, is in the very temper of the prisoned
warrior-poet, who actually chose this way of death. Then the night
scene, with its fantasy, and shadow, and moonlight on flowers and street,
yields to a picture of the day, with the birds singing, and the shepherds
laughing, in the green links between wood and water. There the shepherds
take Nicolete for a fairy, so bright a beauty shines about her. Their
mockery, their independence, may make us consider again our ideas of
early Feudalism. Probably they were in the service of townsmen, whose
good town treated the Count as no more than an equal of its corporate
dignity. The bower of branches built by Nicolete is certainly one of the
places where the minstrel himself has rested and been pleased with his
work. One can feel it still, the cool of that clear summer night, the
sweet smell of broken boughs, and trodden grass, and deep dew, and the
shining of the star that Aucassin deemed was the translated spirit of his
lady. Romance has touched the book here with her magic, as she has