touched the lines where we read how Consuelo came by moonlight to the
Canon's garden and the white flowers. The pleasure here is the keener
for contrast with the luckless hind whom Aucassin encountered in the
forest: the man who had lost his master's ox, the ungainly man who wept,
because his mother's bed had been taken from under her to pay his debt.
This man was in that estate which Achilles, in Hades, preferred above the
kingship of the dead outworn. He was hind and hireling to a villein,

[Greek text]

It is an unexpected touch of pity for the people, and for other than love-
sorrows, in a poem intended for the great and courtly people of chivalry.

At last the lovers meet, in the lodge of flowers beneath the stars. Here
the story should end, though one could ill spare the pretty lecture the
girl reads her lover as they ride at adventure, and the picture of
Nicolete, with her brown stain, and jogleor's attire, and her viol,
playing before Aucassin in his own castle of Biaucaire. The burlesque
interlude of the country of Torelore is like a page out of Rabelais,
stitched into the _cante-fable_ by mistake. At such lands as Torelore
Pantagruel and Panurge touched many a time in their vague voyaging.
Nobody, perhaps, can care very much about Nicolete's adventures in
Carthage, and her recognition by her Paynim kindred. If the old captive
had been a prisoner among the Saracens, he was too indolent or incurious
to make use of his knowledge. He hurries on to his journey's end;

"Journeys end in lovers meeting."

So he finishes the tale. What lives in it, what makes it live, is the
touch of poetry, of tender heart, of humorous resignation. The old