son he had done. But she heard a
great noise in the castle and rose from her bed, and looked
out and heard more clearly the cry of the massacred, and saw
knights in white armour. Wherefore she understood that Sir
Ernault had deceived and betrayed her, and began to weep
bitterly and said, "Ah! that I was ever of mother born: for
that by my crime I have lost my lord Sir Joce, who bred me
so gently, his castle, and his good folk. Had I not been,
nothing had been lost. Alas! that I ever believed this
knight! for by his lies he has ruined me, and what is worse,
my lord too." Then, all weeping, she drew Sir Ernault's
sword and said, "Sir knight! awake, for you have brought
strange company into my lord's castle without his leave. I
brought in only you and your squire. And since you have
deceived me you cannot rightly blame me if I give you your
deserts--at least you shall never boast to any other
mistress that by deceiving me you conquered the castle and
the land of Dinan!" The knight started up, but Marion, with
the sword she held drawn, ran him straight through the body,
and he died at once. She herself, knowing that if she were
taken, ill were the death she should die, and knowing not
what to do, let herself fall from a window and broke her
neck.

Now this, I venture to think, is not an ordinary story. Tales of
treachery, onslaught, massacre, are not rare in the Middle Ages, nor
need we go as far as the Middle Ages for them. But the almost heroic
insouciance with which the traitor knight forgets everything except his
immediate enjoyment, and, provided he has his mistress at his will,
concerns himself not in the slightest degree as to what becomes of his
companions, is not an every-day touch. Nor is the strong contrast of the
chambers of feast and dalliance--undisturbed, voluptuous,
terrestrial-paradisaic--with "the horror and the hell" in the courts
below. Nor, last of all, the picture of the more than half innocent
Marion, night-garbed or ungarbed, but with sword drawn, first hanging
over her slumbering betrayer, then dealing the stroke of vengeance, and
then falling--white against the dark towers and the darker ravines at
their base--to her self-doomed judgment.

[Sidenote: Something on these,]

Even more, however, than in individual points of interest or excitement,
the general survey of these two volumes gi