of jealous husbands, duped,
beaten, and withal perfectly content, and of fit wives for such
husbands. It already pleased their teasing, mocking minds, fond of
generalisations, to make themselves out a vicious race, without faith,
truth, or honour: it ever was a _gab_ of theirs. The more one protests,
the more they insist; they adduce proofs and instances; they are
convinced and finally convince others. In our age of systems, this
magnifying of the abject side of things has been termed "realism"; for
so-called "realism" is nothing more. True it is that if the home of
tales is "not where they are born, but where they are comfortable,"[218]
France was a home for them. They reached there the height of their
prosperity; the turn of mind of which they are the outcome has by no
means disappeared; even to-day it is everywhere found, in the public
squares, in the streets, in the newspapers, theatres, and novels. And it
serves, as it did formerly, to make wholesale condemnations easy, very
easy to judges who may be dazzled by this jugglery of the French mind,
who look only at the goods exhibited before their eyes, and who scruple
the less to pass a sentence as they have to deal with a culprit who
confesses. But judge and culprit both forget that, next to the realism
of the fabliaux, there is the realism of the Song of Roland, not less
real, perhaps more so; for France has _lived_ by her Song of Roland much
more than by her merry tales, that song which was sung in many ways and
for many centuries. Du Guesclin and Corneille both sang it, each one
after his fashion.

On the same table may be found "La Terre," and "Grandeur et Servitude."
In the same hall, the same minstrel, representing in his own person the
whole library of the castle, used formerly to relate the shameful tale
of Gombert and the two clerks, juggle with knives, and sing of Roland.
"I know tales," says one, "I know fabliaux, I can tell fine new
_dits_.... I know the fabliau of the 'Denier' ... and that of Gombert
and dame Erme.... I know how to play with knives, and with the cord and
with the sling, and every fine game in the world. I can sing at will of
King Pepin of St. Denis ... of Charlemagne and of Roland, and of Oliver,
who fought so well; I know of Ogier and of Aymon."[219]

All this literature went over the Channel with the conquerors. Roland
came to England, so did Renard, so did Gombert. They contributed to
transform the mind of the vanquished race, and th