." Like the
"Tristram" of Gottfried von Strassburg, like all these light mediaeval
love _lyrics,_ of which I have been speaking, the rhymed story of
"Flamenca," a pale and simple, but perfect petalled daisy, has come up
in a sort of moral and intellectual dell in the winter of the Middle
Ages--a dell such as you meet in hollows of even the most wind-swept
southern hills, where, while all round the earth is frozen and the short
grass nibbled away by the frost, may be found even at Christmas a bright
sheen of budding wheat beneath the olives on the slope, a yellow haze of
sun upon the grass in which the little aromatic shoots of fennel and
mint and marigold pattern with greenness the sere brown, the
frost-burnt; where the very leafless fruit trees have a spring-like rosy
tinge against the blue sky, and the tufted little osiers flame a joyous
orange against the greenness of the hill.

Such spots there are--and many--in the winter of the Middle Ages; though
it is not in them, but where the rain beats, and the snow and the wind
tugs, that grow, struggling with bitterness, the great things of the
day: the philosophy of Abelard, the love of man of St. Francis, the
patriotism of the Lombard communes; nor that lie dormant, fertilized in
the cold earth, the great things of art and thought, the great things to
come. But in them arise the delicate winter flowers which we prize:
tender, pale things, without much life, things either come too soon or
stayed too late, among which is "Flamenca;" one of those roses, nipped
and wrinkled, but stained a brighter red by the frost, which we pluck in
December or in March; beautiful, bright, scentless roses, which, scarce
in bud, already fall to pieces in our hand. "Flamenca" is simply the
narrative of the loves of the beautiful wife of the bearish and jealous
Count Archambautz, and of Guillems de Nevers, a brilliant young knight
who hears of the lady's sore captivity, is enamoured before he sees her,
dresses up as the priest's clerk, and speaks one word with her while
presenting the mass book to be kissed, every holiday; and finally
deceives the vigilance of the husband by means of a subterranean
corridor, which he gets built between his inn and the bath-room of the
lady at the famous waters of Bourbon-les-Bains. In this world of
"Flamenca," which is in truth the same world as that of the "Romaunt of
the Rose," the "Morte d'Arthur," and of the love poets of early France
and Germany, conjugal m