r
bask in the favour of all beholders.

[Illustration: ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE]

Chief among her admirers was Bernard de Ventadour, whose verse has
received high praise from the poet Petrarch. Of humble birth, he won the
interest of the viscount of the castle, who gave him a good education.
In those days this training consisted in knowing how to be courteous and
well behaved, and how to compose a song and sing it. Bernard, after
exercising his growing powers on the beauties of spring, the fragrance
of flowers, and the music of the nightingale, turned his attentions to
the charms of the young viscountess, which he sung with such success
that one day the object of his praises, in a fit of rapture, bestowed a
kiss upon him. Enraptured by this, he sang his eulogies with still more
boldness, until he roused the jealousy of the lord of the castle, who
locked up his young spouse, and drove the Troubadour from the district.
He took refuge at the court of Eleanor, for whom he conceived a second
and more passionate adoration, and whom he followed to England. But
Henry was either more indulgent or more indifferent, and no further
quarrels came.

The atmosphere of refinement brought into the rude life of the castle by
the Troubadours is more than offset by the domestic infelicity they
caused. Each of these knight-errants of literature was supposed to
choose a lady-love, and it made no difference if she were already
married. Thus conjugal fidelity was at a very low ebb, while amorous
intrigues were openly encouraged by what amounted to a definite system
of civilization. To settle the many vexed questions arising from this
state of affairs, the Courts of Love were formed, at which noble ladies
decided all disputed points. Most famous of these courts was that of
Queen Eleanor herself, while among the others were those of the ladies
of Gascony, the Viscountess of Narbonne, the Countess of Champagne, and
the Countess of Flanders. Disputes before these courts usually took the
form of the tenson, or contention, already described.

Many are the legendary accounts of the laws upon which these courts
based their decisions. There are fables of knights riding in magic
forests and finding scrolls attached by golden chains to the necks of
fiery dragons, or the feet of fleet birds. These laws, if not applicable
in our present civilization, show in the most interesting fashion how
the subject of love was regarded in the twelfth century. Among the