read of Guenevere taking Launfal aside for a little private
conversation in her pleasaunce. It was not only the most private,
but also the most delightful room in the house--ceiled with blue and
carpeted with green. The garden was laid out elaborately with a perron
and many raised seats. Trees stood about the lawn in tubs, and there
was generally a fountain playing in the centre, or possibly a pond,
stocked with fish. Fruit trees and flower beds grew thickly about the
garden, and a pleasanter place of perfume and colour and shade it
would be difficult to imagine in the summer heat. The third room of
which we hear continually in these romances is the lady's chamber. It
served the purpose of a boudoir as well as that of a sleeping room,
and consequently had little real privacy. It contained the marriage
chest with its store of linen, and also the bed. This bed recurs
eternally in mediaeval tales. It was used as a seat during the day, and
as a resting-place of nights. It was a magnificent erection, carved
and gilded, and inlaid with ivory. Upon it was placed a mattress of
feathers, and a soft pillow. The sheets were of linen or silk, and
over all was spread a coverlet of some precious material. An excellent
description of such a couch is given in "The Lay of Gugemar." This
chamber served also as a bath room, and there the bath was taken,
piping hot, in the strange vessel, fashioned somewhat like a churn,
that we see in pictures of the Middle Ages.

Of the dress of the ladies who moved about the castle, seeing
themselves reflected from Marie's pages as in a polished mirror, I
am not competent to speak. The type of beauty preferred by the old
romancers was that of a child's princess of fairy tale--blue-eyed,
golden-haired, and ruddy of cheek. The lady would wear a shift of
linen, "white as meadow flower." Over this was worn a garment of fur
or silk, according to the season; and, above all, a vividly coloured
gown, all in one line from neck to feet, shapen closely to the figure,
or else the more loosely fitting bliaut. Her girdle clipped her
closely about the waist, falling to the hem of her skirt, and her feet
were shod in soundless shoes, without heels. The hair was arranged in
two long braids, brought forward over her shoulders; as worn by those
smiling Queens wrought upon the western porch of Chartres Cathedral.
Out of doors, and, indeed, frequently within, as may be proved by a
reference to "The Lay of the Ash Tree," the