the friend of his life, whose
fate, after he shall be no more, preoccupies him. Just as this sword has
a name, it has a life of its own; Roland wishes it to die with him; he
would like to kill it, as a lover kills his mistress to prevent her
falling into the hands of miscreants. "The steel grates, but neither
breaks nor notches. And the earl cries: Holy Mary, help me!... Ah!
Durandal, so dearly beloved, how white and clear thou art! how thou
shinest and flashest in the sunlight.... Ah! Durandal, fair and holy art
thou!"[169] In truth, this is his love. Little, however, does it matter
to ascertain with what or whom Roland is in love; the thing to be
remembered is that he has a heart which can be touched and moved, and
can indeed feel, suffer, and love.

At Roncevaux, as well as at Hastings, French readiness of wit appears
even in the middle of the battle. Archbishop Turpin, so imposing when he
bestows the last benediction on the row of corpses, keeps all through
the fight a good-humour similar to that of the Conqueror. "This Saracen
seems to me something of a heretic,"[170] he says, espying an enemy; and
he fells him to earth. Oliver, too, in a passage which shows that if
woman has no active part assigned to her in the poem she had begun to
play an important one in real life, slays the caliph and says: Thou at
least shalt not go boasting of our defeat, "either to thy wife or to any
lady in thy land."[171]

It will finally be noticed that the subject of this epic, the oldest in
France, is a defeat, thus showing, even in that far-distant age, what
the heroic ideal of the nation was to be, that is, not so much to
triumph as to die well. She will never lay down her arms merely because
she is beaten; she will only lay them down when enough of her sons have
perished. Even when victory becomes impossible, the nation, however
resigned to the inevitable, still fights for honour. Such as we see her
in the Song of Roland, such she appears in Froissart, and such she has
ever shown herself: "For never was the realm of France so broken, but
that some one to fight against could be found there."[172]

The conquerors of England are complete men; they are not only valiant,
they are learned; they not only take interest in the immediate past of
their own race; they are also interested in the distant past of other
civilised nations; they make their poets tell them of the heroes of
Greece and Rome, and immense metrical works are devoted to