the reader I have done, and let the book tell
him more if he please. To those who helped me in the writing of, nay,
who made it possible to write this book, my gratitude is none the less
strong that I do not write them down in the catalogue. Many a page will
bring back vividly to them as well as to me the circumstances under
which it was written. May these memories sweeten my thanks to them.

PIERCE BUTLER.
New Orleans.

CHAPTER I

IN THE DAYS OF THE CAPETIAN KINGS

In the older conception, history was a record chiefly of battles, of
intrigues, of wicked deeds; it was true that the evil that men did lived
after them; at least, the even tenor of their ways was passed over
without notice by the chroniclers, and only a salient point, a great
battle or a great crime, attracted attention. If little but deeds of
violence is recorded about men, still less notice does the average
mediaeval chronicler condescend to bestow upon women. History has been
unjust to women, and this is preeminently the case in the history of
France at the period with which we are to begin in this chapter. The age
of the good King Robert was an age of warfare; the basic principle of
feudalism was military service; and what position could women occupy in
a social system dependent upon force? The general attitude toward women
is hinted at by the very fact that, in the great war epic of Roland, the
love story, upon which a modern poet would have laid much stress, is
entirely subordinated; it is the hero and his marvellous valor that the
poet keeps before us. The heroine, if she can be so called, the sister
of Roland's brother in arms, Oliver, is not once named by the hero. In
the midst of the battle, when Roland proposes to sound his horn to
summon Charlemagne to his aid, Oliver reproaches him:

"Par ceste meie barbe!
Se puis vedeir ma gente soror Aide,
Vos ne gerrez jamais entre sa brace."

(By my beard! if I live to see my sister, the beautiful Aude, you shall
never be her husband!) After this she is mentioned no more until
Charlemagne returns to Aix with the sad news of Roland's heroic death.
Then comes to him _la belle Aude_ to ask where is her betrothed Roland.
"Thou askest me for one who is dead," says Charlemagne; "but I will give
thee a better man, my son and heir, Louis." "I understand thee not,"
replies Aude. "God forbid that I should survive Roland!" She falls
fainting at the emperor's feet, and