s copying from and slyly poking fun at our friend Robert
de Blois and his fine lady.

"Quant mengie eurent, si laverent.
Li menestrel dont en alerent
Cascuns a son mestier servir."

(When they had eaten, they washed their hands; then the minstrels began,
each doing that which he could do best.) The tables cleared, the guests,
the ladies not excepted, watched the tricks of the jugglers and
tumblers, listened to the minstrels, or told tales, nearly all of which
were horribly coarse. Sometimes brawls followed the too free use of
wine, as one romance tells us "you might see them throw at each other
cheeses, and big quartern-loaves, and hunks of meat, and sharp steel
knives." But sometimes the ladies strolled off into the gardens and
played games--blindman's-buff, or frog-in-the-middle, or the like--or
sang to the harp, or sewed. A great deal of time, indeed, was spent out
of doors, not only in the gentler field sports, such as hawking, in
which ladies participated, but also in the mere routine of daily life.
In the romances many a scene of revelry as well as of love making takes
place under the trees; and the ladies are not always idling away their
time, either; for we find them spinning, embroidering, or at least
making garlands of flowers. We have a pretty picture in the _Roman de la
Violette_ of a burgher's daughter "who sat in her father's chamber,
working a stole and amice in silk, with care and skill, and embroidering
upon her work many a little cross and star, singing the while this
spinning song (_chanson a toile_)."

With all this romance and poetry there went a freedom of intercourse
between the sexes that not infrequently led to serious immorality. Not
only did the ladies play rather rough games and listen to very vulgar
stories with the men, but they received visits from men in their
bed-chambers, _tete-a-tete_. More surprising still, ladies sometimes
visited men in this way, without its being considered a serious breach
of etiquette, as one can see in the fashionable romance of _Jean de
Dammartin et Blonde d'Oxford_. The ladies, when they really fell in
love, did not attempt to conceal the passion from any feeling of shame
or delicacy; nay, they were commonly very forward, and became ardent
suitors sometimes, with less of restraint in word and deed than was
shown by the chivalrous knight under similar circumstances. Indeed, the
knight had need to be a veritable Joseph to withstand tem