questioned; harder rules of love are from year to year imposed on the
heroes; they are expected to turn pale at the sight of their mistress;
Lancelot espying a hair of Guinevere well-nigh faints; they observe the
thirty-one regulations laid down by Andre le Chapelain, to guide the
perfect lover.[193] After having been first an accessory, then an
irresistible passion, love, that the poets think to magnify, will soon
be nothing but a ceremonial. From the time of Lancelot we border on
folly; military honour no longer counts for the hero; Guinevere out of
caprice orders Lancelot to behave "his worst"; without hesitating or
comprehending he obeys, and covers himself with shame. Each successive
romance writer goes a step farther, and makes new additions; we come to
immense compositions, to strings of adventures without any visible link;
to heroes so uniformly wonderful that they cease to inspire any interest
whatever. Tristan's rose-bush twined itself around the pillars, the
pillars are lacking now, and the clusters of flowers trail on the
ground. Tristan was a harbinger of Musset; Guinevere gives us a desire
for a Cervantes.

Meanwhile, the minstrels of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries enjoy
their success and their fame; their number increases; they are welcomed
in the castles, hearkened to in the towns; their tales are copied in
manuscripts, more and more magnificently painted. They celebrate, in
England as in France, Gauvain, "le chevalier aux demoiselles," Ivain,
"le chevalier au lion"; Merlin, Joseph of Arimathea, Percival and the
quest of the mysterious Graal, and all the rest of the Round Table
heroes.[194]

IV.

They have also shorter narratives in prose and verse, the subject of
which is generally love, drawn from French, Latin, Greek, and even
Hindu legends,[195] stories like those of Amis and Amile, of Floire and
Blanchefleur, lays like those of Marie de France.[196] Marie was Norman,
and lived in the time of Henry II., to whom she dedicated her poems.
They are mostly graceful love-tales, sweetly told, without affectation
or effort, and derived from Celtic originals, some being of Armorican
and some of Welsh descent. Several are devoted to Tristan and other
Arthurian knights. In the lay of the Ash, Marie tells a story of female
virtue, the main incidents of which will be found again later in the
tale of Griselda. Her lay of the Two Lovers would have delighted Musset:

"Truth is that in Neustria, which w