have torn the smock off
her back, and now she has to lie on the straw. It is about her that
I am afflicted more than about myself, because, as to me, I may get
some money some day or other, and as to the red bullock, he may be
paid for when he may. And I should never weep for such a trifle as
that. Ah! woe betide those who shall make sorrow with you!'"

Inserted merely to give occasion to show Aucassin's good heart in paying
the twenty _sols_ for the man's red bullock; perhaps for no reason at
all, but certainly with no idea of making the lover's misery seem by
comparison trifling--there are, nevertheless, few things in literature
more striking than the meeting in the wood of the daintily nurtured boy,
weeping over the girl whom he loves with almost childish love of the
fancy; and of that ragged, tattered, hideous serf, at whose very aspect
the Bel Aucassin stops in awe and terror. And the attitude is grand of
this unfortunate creature, who neither begs nor threatens, scarcely
complains, and not at all for himself; but merely tells his sordid
misfortune with calm resignation, as if used to such everyday miseries,
roused to indignation only at the sight of the tears which the fine-bred
youth is shedding. We feel the dreadful solemnity of the man's words; of
the reproach thus thrown by the long-suffering serf, accustomed to
misfortunes as the lean ox is to blows, to that delicate thing weeping
for his lady love, for the lady of his fancy. It is the one occasion
upon which that delicate and fantastic mediaeval love poetry, that
fanciful, wistful stripling King Love of the Middle Ages, in which he
keeps high court, and through which he rides in triumphal procession;
that King Love laughing and fainting by turns with all his dapper
artificiality of woes; is confronted with the sordid reality, the tragic
impersonation of all the dumb miseries, the lives and loves, crushed and
defiled unnoticed, of the peasantry of those days. Yes, while they
sing--Provencals, minnesingers, Sicilians, sing of their earthly lady
and of their paramour in heaven--the hideous peasant, whose naked granny
is starving on the straw, looks on with dull and tearless eyes; crying
out to posterity, as the serf cries to Aucassin: "Woe to those who shall
sorrow at the tears of such as these."

II.

But meanwhile, during those centuries which lie between the dark ages
and modern times, the Middle Ages (inasmuch as they mean n