etc., for he could hardly hope for such a
literal "stroke of luck" again.

[73] The name will suggest, to those who have some wine-lore, no less a
vintage than Chateau Yquem. Nothing could be better for a person in the
Count's condition as a restorative.

[74] These two directions obviously refer to the common mediaeval
"wimple" arrangement.

CHAPTER IV

THE BEGINNINGS OF PROSE FICTION

[Sidenote: Prose novelettes of the thirteenth century. _Aucassin et
Nicolette_ not quite typical.]

The title of this chapter may seem an oversight or an impertinence,
considering that large parts of an earlier one have been occupied with
discussions and translations of the prose Arthurian Romances. It was,
however, expressly pointed out that the priority of these is a matter of
opinion, not of judgment; and it may be here quite frankly admitted that
one of the most serious arguments against that priority is the extreme
lateness of Old French Prose in any finished literary form. The excuse,
however, if excuse be needed, does not turn on any such hinge as this.
It was desired to treat, in the last two chapters, romance matter proper
of the larger kind, whether that matter took the form of prose or of
verse. Here, on the other hand, the object is to deal with the smaller
but more miscellaneous body of fictitious matter (part, no doubt, of a
larger) which presents it tolerably early, and in character foretells
the immense development of the kind which French was to see later.[75] A
portion of this body, sufficient for us, is contained in two little
volumes of the _Bibliotheque Elzevirienne_, published rather less than
sixty years ago (1856 and 1858) by MM. L. Moland and Ch. d'Hericault,
the first devoted to thirteenth-, the second to fourteenth-century work.
One of these, the now world-famous _Aucassin et Nicolette_, has been so
much written about and so often translated already that it cannot be
necessary to say a great deal about it here. It is, moreover, of a mixed
kind, a _cante-fable_ or blend of prose and verse, with a considerable
touch of the dramatic in it. Its extraordinary charm is a thing long ago
settled; but it is, on the whole, more of a dramatic and lyrical
romance--to recouple or releash kinds which Mr. Browning had perhaps
best never have put asunder--than of a pure prose tale.

[Sidenote: _L'Empereur Constant_ more so.]

Its companions in the thirteenth-century volume are four in number, and
if none of t