APRIL 14, 1355--OCTOBER 23, 1356

"_D'aquest segle flac, plen de marrimen,
S'amor s'en vai, son jot teinh mensongier_."


_So Florian married Sylvie, and made her, they relate, a fair husband,
as husbands go. And children came to them, and then old age, and, lastly,
that which comes to all.

Which reminds me that it was an uncomfortable number of years ago, in an
out-of-the-way corner of the library at Allonby Shaw, that I first came
upon_ Les Aventures d'Adhelmar de Nointel. _This manuscript dates from
the early part of the fifteenth century and is attributed--though on no
very conclusive evidence, says Hinsauf,--to the facile pen of Nicolas de
Caen (circa 1450), until lately better known as a lyric poet and
satirist.

The story, told in decasyllabic couplets, interspersed after a rather
unusual fashion with innumerable lyrics, seems in the main authentic. Sir
Adhelmar de Nointel, born about 1332, was once a real and stalwart
personage, a younger brother to that Henri de Nointel, the fighting
Bishop of Mantes, whose unsavory part in the murder of Jacques van
Arteveldt history has recorded at length; and it is with the exploits of
this Adhelmar that the romance deals, not, it may be, without
exaggeration.

In any event, the following is, with certain compressions and omissions
that have seemed desirable, the last episode of the_ Aventures. _The tale
concerns the children of Florian and Sylvie: and for it I may claim, at