out a vo talent.
or nos copez les chies isnellement;
car dex de glorie nos avra en present,
en paradis en irommes chantant
et proierommes Jhesu cui tout apent
que dou pechie vos face tensement,
vos et Ami, vostre compaingnon gent;
mais nostre mere, la bele Belissant,
nos saluez por deu omnipotent.'
li cuens l'oit, moult grans pities l'en prent
que touz pasmez a la terre s'estent.
quant se redresce, si reprinst hardement.
or orroiz ja merveilles, bonne gent,
que tex n'oistes en tout vostre vivant.
li cuens Amiles vint vers le lit esrant,
hauce l'espee, li fiuls le col estent.
or est merveilles se li cuers ne li ment.
la teste cope li peres son anfant,
le sanc reciut et cler bacin d'argent:
a poi ne chiet a terre.

No sooner has the blood touched Amis than he is cured, and the knights
solemnly visit the church where Bellicent and the people are assembled.
The story is told and the mother, in despair, rushes to the chamber
where her dead children are lying. But she finds them living and in full
health, for a miracle has been wrought to reward the faithfulness of the
friends now that suffering has purged them of their sin.

This story, touching in itself, is most touchingly told in the Chanson.
No poem of the kind is more vivid in description, or fuller of details
of the manners of the time, than _Amis et Amiles_. Bellicent and Lubias,
the former passionate and impulsive but loving and faithful, the latter
treacherous, revengeful, and cold-hearted, give perhaps the earliest
finished portraits of feminine character to be found in French
literature. Amis and Amiles themselves are presented to us under so many
more aspects than Roland and Oliver that they dwell better in the
memory. The undercurrent of savagery which distinguished mediaeval times,
and the rapid changes of fortune which were possible therein, are also
well brought out. Not even the immolation of Ganelon's hostages is so
striking as the calm ferocity with which Charlemagne dooms his wife and
son as well as his daughter to pay with their lives the penalty of
Bellicent's fault; while the sudden lapse of Amis from his position of
feudal lordship at Blaye to that of a miserable outcast, smitten and
marked out for public scorn and ill-treatment by the visitation of God,
is unusually dramatic. _Amis et Amiles_ bears to _Roland_ something not
at all unlike the relation of the Odyssey to