unto the joye of them that he
promysed his feythe unto: for there was never worshypful man or
worshipfull woman but they loved one better than another ... & suche
love, I calle vertuous love." But now-a-days, continues the old knight,
little suspecting that his grievance is one of all ages, men cannot love
seven-night but they must have all their desires. The old love was not
so. Men and women could love together seven years, and no wanton lusts
were between them, and then was love truth and faithfulness. "And loo,"
Malory adds forgetting that his Lancelot and his Tristan waited much
less than seven years, "in lyke wyse was used love in Kynge Arthurs
dayes."[24]

Very strikingly does this view of love contrast with the southern
irrepressible impetuosities of young Aucassin, who, considering, three
centuries earlier, this same question of holy and profane love, of earth
and paradise, in the above-mentioned exquisite prose tale which bears
his name, simply alters the order of precedence afterwards adopted by
good Sir Thomas: "Tell me," says he, "where is the place so high in all
the world that Nicolete, my sweet lady and love, would not grace it
well? If she were Empress of Constantinople or of Germany, or Queen of
France or England, it were little enough for her.... In Paradise what
have I to win? Therein I seek not to enter, but only to have Nicolete my
sweet lady that I love so well.... For in Paradise go none but ... these
same old priests, and halt old men and maimed, who all day and night
cower continually before the altars, and in the crypts.... These be they
that go into Paradise; with them have I naught to make. But into Hell
would I fain go; for into Hell fare the goodly clerks and goodly knights
that fall in tourneys and great wars.... And thither pass the sweet
ladies.... Thither goes the gold and the silver and cloth of vair, and
cloth of gris, and harpers and makers, and the prince of this world.
With these I would gladly go, let me but have with me Nicolete my
sweetest lady."[25]

[Illustration: "NOBLE HELYAS KNYGHTE OF THE SWANNE," ABOUT 1550.]

No one perceived the coldness of Malory's stories. He wrote for a
youthful and enthusiastic people; it was a period of new birth
throughout Europe, the period of the spring-time of modern literature,
the epoch of the Renaissance. There was no need to depict in realistic
fashion the passions and stirrings of the heart in order to excite the
emotion of the reader