BIAUCAIRE, opposite Tarascon, also celebrated for its local hero, the
deathless Tartarin. There is a great deal of learning about Biaucaire;
probably the author of the _cante-fable_ never saw the place, but he need
not have thought it was on the sea-shore, as (p. 39) he seems to do.
There he makes the people of Beaucaire set out to wreck a ship. Ships do
not go up the Rhone, and get wrecked there, after escaping the perils of
the deep.

On p. 42, the poet clearly thinks that Nicolete, after landing from her
barque, had to travel a considerable distance before reaching Biaucaire.
The fact is that the poet is perfectly reckless of geography, like him
who wrote of the set-shore of Bohemia.

PAINTED WONDROUSLY. No one knows what is really meant by a _miramie_.

PLENTIFUL LACK OF COMFORT: rather freely for _Mout i aries peu conquis_.

MALENGIN: a favourite word of Sir Thomas Malory: "mischievous intent."

FEATS OF YOUTH: ENFANCES, the regular term for the romance of a knight's
early prowess.

TWO APPLES; nois gauges in the original. But _walnuts_ sound inadequate.

Here the MS. has a _lacuna_.

There is much useless learning about the realm of _Torelore_. It is
somewhere between Kor and Laputa. The custom of the _Couvade_ was dimly
known to the poet. The feigned lying-in of the father may have been