the
Franks; for "fair lady's look makes men undertake folly." She is taken,
however, in her own toils; falls in love with Baldwin one summer's day
on seeing him ride forth with hawk on wrist, and makes Helissend invite
him over the river, under a very frank pledge that "she will be his,
for loss or gain." Their first meeting apparently takes place in the
presence of Sebile's ladies, and so little mystery is attached to their
love that, on Baldwin's return to the Frank host after killing and
despoiling of his armour a Saxon chief, he not only tells his adventure
publicly to the Emperor, but the latter promises in a twelvemonth to
have him crowned king of the country and to give him Sebile for wife,
forbidding him, however, to cross the river any more--a command which
Baldwin hears without meaning to obey. Nay, when Baldwin has once broken
this injunction and escaped with great difficulty from the Saxons, the
Emperor imposes on him the brutal penance of entering Sebile's tent to
kiss her in the sight of the Saxons, and bringing back her ring--which
Baldwin contrives to fulfil by putting on the armour of a Saxon knight
whom he kills. As in The Taking of Orange, it never seems to occur
to the poet that there can be any moral wrong in making love to a
"Saracen's" wife, or in promising her hand in her husband's lifetime;
and, strange to say, so benignant are these much-wronged paynim that
Guiteclin is not represented as offering or threatening the slightest
ill-treatment to his faithless queen, however wroth he may be against
her lover; nor, indeed, as having even the sense to make her pitch her
tent further from the bank. The drollest bit of sentimentality occurs,
however, after the victory of the Franks and Guiteclin's death, when
Sebile is taken prisoner. After having been bestowed in marriage
on Baldwin by the Emperor, she asks one boon of both, which is that
Guiteclin's body be sought for, lest the beasts should eat it--a request
the exceeding nobleness of which strikes the Emperor and the Frank
knights with astonishment. When the body is found and brought to Sebile,
"the water of her eyes falls down her chin. 'Ha, Guiteclin,' said she,
'so gentle a man were you, liberal and free-spending, and of noble
witness! If in heaven and on earth Mahomet has no power, even to pray
Him who made Lazarus, I pray and request Him to have mercy on
thee.'" The dead man is then placed in a great marble tomb; Sebile
is christened, marries h