in the cathedral), "proud, vain, rude, and so worldly and licentious in
his habits that he could not be restrained." With all his rakish ways,
however, there was one thing that this man of God never omitted to do:
"He would never pass before the image of Our Lady... without kneeling;"
and once on his knees, "his face wet with tears, he saluted her many
times most humbly, and beat his breast." Now the clerk was killed by an
enemy of his, and then the world began to speak ill of him, and, on
account of his notorious bad habits, they buried his body in a ditch
outside Chartres. Thirty days, or nights, afterward, "she from whom
springs all pity, all mildness and sweetness and love, and who never
forgets her servants," appeared in a dream to one of the other clerks
and reproached him bitterly for the dishonor done her servitor, of whose
piety she then told him. The clergy of the city marched out to the grave
of the clerk; and when it was opened they found "a flower in his mouth,
so fresh and full of bloom that it seemed as if it had just blown
there"; while the tongue with which he used to praise the Virgin was
preserved from corruption, "as clear as is a rose in May." The moral of
this story, one would think, would be anything but salutary; it is only
when one recognizes the simple, unsophisticated piety which inspired it,
and reflects upon its teaching of greater gentleness, greater charity in
judging others, that one can admire it.

To the mediaeval mind, indeed, the Virgin was not very unlike a heroine
of romance, and it was no disrespect to deck her out in fancy as
gorgeously as some fair Elaine or Iseut. The story of this latter
heroine, whose name no two will spell alike,--Iseut, Ysoult, Isolde,
Isout, Ysolt,--is one typical of the age of romance and chivalry, and
one which we shall give, despite its familiarity. By way of preface it
may be well to remark that the story has been told so often that the
variations introduced by this or that reviser are not to be
distinguished from the original.

The mother of Tristan was Isabelle, sister of King Mark of Cornwall,
who, dying when her son was born, asked that he be called Tristan, or
Tristram, "that is as much as to say, sorrowful birth." The boy was
hated by his uncle, King Mark, who tried to make away with him; but the
youth escaped to France, where he won the love of King Faramond's
daughter, and was in consequence compelled to flee again to Cornwall,
where a tempor