oof were decorated with carving. Sometimes
a further effect of color might be added by tapestries upon the walls,
and sometimes, though rarely, by mural paintings, as we are told in the
lay of _Guingamor_:

"La chambre est paint tut entur;
Venus, la devesse d'amur,
Fu tres bein en la paintur."

(The room is painted all about; Venus, the goddess of Love, was
beautifully pictured in the painting.)

The floor of the hall might be of wood, though at the early period of
which we write it was very commonly of earth. There were no carpets,
except in palaces of great luxury, even at a much later date; instead,
the floor was covered with rushes or straw. Straw was anciently one of
the symbols of investiture; in the Salic law the person conveying an
estate cast a wisp of straw into the bosom of him to whom the property
was to be conveyed. With this custom in mind, we can understand the
anecdote told by Alberic des Troisfontaines of William the Conqueror.
The floor of the room in which he was born was covered with straw. The
newborn child, having been placed on the floor for a moment, seized in
his tiny hands a bit of the straw, which he held vigorously. _"Parfoi!"_
cried the midwife, _"cet enfant commence jeune a conquerir."_ Obviously,
the anecdote, with its allusion to the Conquest, was made up long after
the event, but it serves to show that even in the mansions of the well
to do straw was the usual floor covering; and even much later we do not
find the old coverings of rushes, branches, or straw displaced by
carpets. In 1373 the inhabitants of a certain town (Aubervilliers) were
exempted from a feudal tax on condition of their furnishing annually
forty cartloads of straw to the hotel, or palace, of Charles V., twenty
to that of the queen, and ten to that of the dauphin. On special
occasions the ordinary straw might be displaced by fresh green boughs
upon the floor and against the walls. Froissart tells us that on a very
warm day "the count of Foix entered his chamber and found it all strewn
with verdure and full of fresh new boughs; the walls all about were
covered with green boughs to make the room more fresh and fragrant....
When he felt himself in this fresh new chamber, he said: 'This greenery
refreshes me greatly, for assuredly this has been a hot day.'" When the
rushes or straw remained long on the floor without being renewed, as was
assuredly often the case, trampled on by men and used as a c