en what we should nowadays call a virago,
of violent temperament, with vivid passions, broken in from childhood to
all physical exercises, sharing the pleasures and dangers of the knights
around her. Feudal life, fertile in surprises and in risks, demanded even
in women a vigorous temper of soul and body, a masculine air, and habits
also that were almost virile. She accompanied her father or her husband to
the chase, while in war-time, if she became a widow or if her husband was
away at the Crusades, she was ready, if necessary, to direct the defences
of the lordship, and in peace time she was not afraid of the longest and
most dangerous pilgrimages. She might even go to the Crusades on her own
account, and, if circumstances required, conduct a war to come out
victoriously.

We may imagine the robust kind of education required to produce people of
this quality. But as regards the precise way in which parents conducted
that education, we have, as Luchaire admits, little precise knowledge. It
is for the most part only indirectly, by reading between the lines, that
we glean something as to what it was considered befitting to inculcate in
a good household, and as what we thus learn is mostly from the writings of
Churchmen it is doubtless a little one-sided. Thus Adam de Perseigne, an
ecclesiastic, writes to the Countess du Perche to advise her how to live
in a Christian manner; he counsels her to abstain from playing games of
chance and chess, not to take pleasure in the indecent farces of actors,
and to be moderate in dress. Then, as ever, preachers expressed their
horror of the ruinous extravagance of women, their false hair, their
rouge, and their dresses that were too long or too short. They also
reprobated their love of flirtation. It was, however, in those days a
young girl's recognised duty, when a knight arrived in the household, to
exercise the rites of hospitality, to disarm him, give him his bath, and
if necessary massage him to help him to go to sleep. It is not surprising
that the young girl sometimes made love to the knight under these
circumstances, nor is it surprising that he, engaged in an arduous life
and trained to disdain feminine attractions, often failed to respond.

It is easy to understand how this state of things gradually became
transformed into the considerably different position of parents and child
we have known, which doubtless attained its climax nearly a century ago.
Feudal conditions, with