mentioned in the prayer. To this seigneur, Roland in dying,
proffered (puroffrit) his right-hand gauntlet. Death was an act of
homage. God sent down his Archangel Gabriel as his representative to
accept the homage and receive the glove. To Duke William and his
barons nothing could seem more natural and correct. God was not
farther away than Charlemagne.

Correct as the law may have been, the religion even at that time
must have seemed to the monks to need professional advice. Roland's
life was not exemplary. The "Chanson" had taken pains to show that
the disaster at Roncesvalles was due to Roland's headstrong folly
and temper. In dying, Roland had not once thought of these faults,
or repented of his worldly ambitions, or mentioned the name of Alda,
his betrothed. He had clung to the memory of his wars and conquests,
his lineage, his earthly seigneur Charlemagne, and of "douce
France." He had forgotten to give so much as an allusion to Christ.
The poet regarded all these matters as the affair of the Church; all
the warrior cared for was courage, loyalty, and prowess.

The interest of these details lies not in the scholarship or the
historical truth or even the local colour, so much as in the art.
The naivete of the thought is repeated by the simplicity of the
verse. Word and thought are equally monosyllabic. Nothing ever
matched it. The words bubble like a stream in the woods:--

Co sent Rollanz de sun tens ni ad plus.


Try and put them into modern French, and see what will happen:--