t, he does not give his wife the only proof that he acknowledges
the involuntariness of her actual misfortune, and forgives the
voluntariness of her intended crime. His telling the story is
inexcusable: and neither his preference of his allegiance as a vassal to
his duty as knight, lover, and husband in the case of the Count's
cruelty, nor his final acceptance of so many and such peculiar bygones
can be called very pretty. But there are possibilities in the story, if
they are not exactly made into good gifts.

[Sidenote: Those of the fourteenth. _Asseneth._]

The contents of the fourteenth-century volume are, with one exception,
much less interesting in themselves; but from the point of view of the
present enquiry they hardly yield to their predecessors. They are three
in number: _Asseneth_, _Foulques Fitzwarin_, and _Troilus_. The first,
which is very short, is an account of Joseph's courtship of his future
wife, in which entirely guiltless proceeding he behaves at first very
much as if the daughter of Potipherah were fruit as much forbidden as
the wife of Potiphar. For on her being proposed to him (he has come to
her father, splendidly dressed and brilliantly handsome, on a mission
from Pharaoh) he at first replies that he will love her as his sister.
This, considering the Jewish habit of exchanging the names, might not be
ominous. But when the damsel, at her father's bidding, offers to kiss
him, Joseph puts his hand on her chest and pushes her back, accompanying
the action with words (even more insulting in detail than in substance)
to the effect that it is not for God-fearing man to kiss an idolatress.
(At this point one would rather like to kick Joseph.) However, when,
naturally enough, she cries with vexation, the irreproachable but most
unlikable patriarch condescends to pat her on the head and bless her.
This she takes humbly and thankfully; deplores his absence, for he is
compelled to return to his master; renounces her gods; is consoled by an
angel, who feeds her with a miraculous honeycomb possessing a sort of
sacramental force, and announces her marriage to Joseph, which takes
place almost immediately.

It will be at once seen, by those who know something of the matter, that
this is entirely in the style of large portions of the Graal romances;
and so it gives us a fresh and interesting division of the new short
prose tale, allying itself to some extent with the allegory which was to
be so fruitful both in