of early French prose.

All through it one feels the influence of that faint air of overwrought
delicacy, almost of wantonness, which was so strong a characteristic of
the poetry of the Troubadours. The Troubadours themselves were often men
of great rank; they wrote for an exclusive audience, people of much
leisure and great refinement, and they came to value a type of personal
beauty which has in it but little of the influence of the open air and
sunshine. There is a languid Eastern deliciousness in the very scenery
of the story, the full-blown roses, the chamber painted in some
mysterious manner where Nicolette is imprisoned, the cool brown marble,
the almost nameless colours, the odour of plucked grass and flowers.
Nicolette herself well becomes this scenery, and is the best
illustration of the quality I mean--the beautiful, weird, foreign girl,
whom the shepherds take for a fay, who has the knowledge of simples, the
healing and beautifying qualities of leaves and flowers, whose skilful
touch heals Aucassin's sprained shoulder, so that he suddenly leaps from
the ground; the mere sight of whose white flesh, as she passed the place
where he lay, healed a pilgrim stricken with sore disease, so that he
rose up, and returned to his own country. With this girl Aucassin is so
deeply in love that he forgets all his knightly duties. At last
Nicolette is shut up to get her out of his way, and perhaps the
prettiest passage in the whole piece is the fragment of prose which
describes her escape from this place:--

"Aucassin was put in prison, as you have heard, and Nicolette remained
shut up in her chamber. It was summer-time, in the month of May, when
the days are warm and long and clear, and the nights coy and serene.

"One night Nicolette, lying on her bed, saw the moon shine clear through