etainer" of an editor
ought not to have induced M. Robert to say that Melior's original
surrender was "against her will," though she certainly did make a
protest of a kind.[64] But the enchanted and enchanting Empress's
constancy is inviolable. Even after she has been obliged to banish her
foolish lover, or rather after he has banished himself, she avows
herself his only. She will die, she says, before she takes another lord;
and for this reason objects for some time to the proposed tourney for
her hand, in which the already proven invincibility of the Count of
Blois makes him almost a certain victor, because it involves a
conditional consent to admit another mate. To her scrupulousness, a kind
of blunt common-sense, tempering the amiability of Urraca, is a pleasant
set-off, and the freshness of Persewis completes the effect.

Moreover, there are little bits of almost Chaucerian vividness and
terseness here and there, contrasting oddly with the _chevilles_--the
stock phrases and epithets--elsewhere. When the tourney actually comes
off and Partenopeus is supposed to be prisoner of a felon knight afar
off, the two sisters and Persewis take their places at the entrance of
the tower crossing the bridge at Melior's capital, "Chef d'Oire."[65]
Melior is labelled only "whom all the world loves and prizes," but
Urraca and her damsel "have their faces pale and discoloured--for they
have lost much of their beauty--so sorely have they wept Partenopeus."
On the contrary, when, at the close of the first day's tourney, the
usual "unknown knights" (in this case the Count of Blois himself and his
friend Gaudins) ride off triumphant, they "go joyfully to their hostel
with lifted lances, helmets on head, hauberks on back, and shields held
proudly as if to begin jousting."

Bel i vinrent et bel s'en vont,

says King Corsols, one of the judges of the tourney, but not in the
least aware of their identity. This may occur elsewhere, but it is by no
means one of the commonplaces of Romance, and a well hit-off picture is
motived by a sharply cut phrase.[66]

It is this sudden enlivening of the commonplaces of Romance with vivid
picture and phrase which puts _Partenopeus_ high among its fellows. The
story is very simple, and the variation and multiplication of episodic
adventure unusually scanty; while the too common genealogical preface is
rather exceptionally superfluous. That the Count of Blois is the nephew
of Clovis can interest--ou