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 [21] 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 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:--

"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 the little window, and heard the nightingale sing in the
garden, and then came the memory of Aucassin, whom she so
much loved. She thought of the Count Garins of Beaucaire, who
mortally hated her, and, to be rid of her, might at any moment