ideas of the
distribution of the rooms in the houses of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries. Thus, in one of the _fabliaux_, an old woman of mean
condition of life is represented as visiting a burgher's wife, who,
from a feeling of vanity, takes her into the chamber to show her
the new bed, a very handsome affair. Afterward, when this lady takes
refuge with the old dame, the latter conducts her from the hall to
the chamber adjoining. The outer door of the chamber, by which egress
could be had from the house without going through the hall, often
figures in the stories as aiding the escape of the lovers of guilty
wives, on the unexpected entrance of the husbands into the hall. It
was in the chamber that fireplaces and chimneys were first introduced
into mediaeval houses.

As the grouping of the rooms upon the ground floor made the house less
compact and more susceptible to successful attack, the custom arose of
having upper chambers. The upper room was called the solar, because it
received much light from the sun. At first it was but a small chamber,
approached from the outside. These outer stairs are often referred to
in the _fabliaux_, as in the _fabliau_ of D'Estourmi, where a burgher
and his wife deceive three monks of a neighboring abbey, who make love
to the lady; she conceals her husband in the upper chamber, to which
he goes by an outer staircase. The monks enter the hall, and the
husband sees from the upper room, through a lattice, all that happens.
In another _fabliau_, a lady uses the solar as a hiding place for her
husband, who has disguised himself as a gallant in order to test his
wife's faithfulness. She penetrates his disguise, and, after closing
the door of the solar upon him, sends a servant to give him a good
beating, as an importunate suitor whom she desires to cure of his
annoying passion. The husband, too mortified to reveal his identity
and disclose his doubts as to his wife, has no redress but to sustain
his assumed character and to escape down the outer stairs, pursued by
the servants. The chamber soon came to be the most important part of
the house, and frequently its name was given to the whole dwelling,
a house with a solar being called an upper-storied chamber. The more
considerable manors and castles differed from the ordinary houses only
in having a greater assemblage of rooms and more details than were
found in the smaller dwellings.

Toward the fourteenth century, the rooms of houses g