iling monarch,
Alphonse XIII, has been known to take "tea" on the terrace of the great
tourist-peopled hotel in company with mere be-goggled commoners. _Le
temps va!_ Were monarchs so democratic in the olden time, one wonders.

The court chronicles of all ages, and all ranks, have proved a gold
mine for the makers of books of all sorts and conditions. Not only court
chroniclers but pamphleteers, even troubadours and players, have
contributed much to the records of the life of mediaeval France. All
history was not made by political intrigue or presumption; a good deal
of it was born of the gentler passions, and a chap-book maker would put
often into print many accounts which the recorder of mere history did
not dare use. History is often enough sorry stuff when it comes to human
interest, and it needs editing only too often.

Courtiers and the fashionable world of France, ever since the days of
the poetry-making and ballad-singing Francis and Marguerite, and before,
for that matter, made of literature--at least the written and spoken
chronicle of some sort--a diversion and an accomplishment. Royal or
official patronage given these mediaeval story-tellers did not always
produce the truest tales. Then, as now, writer folk were wont to
exaggerate, but most of their work made interesting reading.

These courtiers of the itching pen did not often write for money. Royal
favour, or that of some fair lady, or ladies, was their chief return in
many more cases than those for which their accounts were settled by mere
dross. It is in the work of such chroniclers as these that one finds a
fund of unrepeated historic lore.

The dramatists came on the scene with their plots ready-made (and have
been coming ever since, if one recalls the large number of French
costume plays of recent years), and whether they introduced errors of
fact, or not, there was usually so much truth about their work that the
very historians more than once were obliged to have recourse to the
productions of their colleagues. The dramatists' early days in France,
as in England, were their golden days. The mere literary man, or
chronicler, was often flayed alive, but the dramatist, even though he
dished up the foibles of a king, and without any dressing at that, was
feted and made as much of as a record piano player of to-day.

One hears a lot about the deathbed scribblers in England in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but there was not much of that sor