Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres Part 13

Cure ne volt prendre de sei Car la prenge sevals de tei.

Tu es fieblette et tendre chose E es plus fresche que n'est rose.

Tu es plus blanche que crystal Que neif que chiet sor glace en val.

Mal cuple en fist li Criatur.

Tu es trop tendre e il trop dur.

Mais neporquant tu es plus sage En grant sens as mis tun corrage For co fait bon traire a tei.

Parler te voil.

Eva. Ore ja fai.

Devil. Adam I've seen, but he's too rough.

Eve. A little hard!

Devil. He'll soon be soft enough!

Harder than h.e.l.l he is till now.

Eve. He's very frank!

Devil. Say very low!

To help himself he does not care; The helping you shall be my share; For you are tender, gentle, true, The rose is not so fresh as you; Whiter than crystal, or than snow That falls from heaven on ice below.

A sorry mixture G.o.d has brewed, You too tender, he too rude.

But you have much the greater sense, Your will is all intelligence.

Therefore it is I turn to you.

I want to tell you--

Eve. Do it now!

The woman's greater intelligence was to blame for Adam's fall. Eve was justly punished because she should have known better, while Adam, as the Devil truly said, was a dull animal, hardly worth the trouble of deceiving. Adam was disloyal, too, untrue to his wife after being untrue to his Creator:--

La femme que tu me donas Ele fist prime icest trespa.s.s Donat le mei e jo mangai.

Or mest vis tornez est a gwai Mal acontai icest manger.

Jo ai mesfait par ma moiller.

The woman that you made me take First led me into this mistake.

She gave the apple that I ate And brought me to this evil state.

Badly for me it turned, I own, But all the fault is hers alone.

The audience accepted this as natural and proper. They recognized the man as, of course, stupid, cowardly, and traitorous. The men of the baser sort revenged themselves by boorishness that pa.s.sed with them for wit in the taverns of Arras, but the poets of the higher cla.s.s commonly took sides with the women. Even Chaucer, who lived after the glamour had faded, and who satirized women to satiety, told their tale in his "Legend of Good Women," with evident sympathy. To him, also, the ordinary man was inferior,--stupid, brutal, and untrue. "Full brittle is the truest," he said:--

For well I wote that Christ himself telleth That in Israel, as wide as is the lond, That so great faith in all the loud he ne fond As in a woman, and this is no lie; And as for men, look ye, such tyrannie They doen all day, a.s.say hem who so list, The truest is full brotell for to trist.

Neither brutality nor wit helped the man much. Even Bluebeard in the end fell a victim to the superior qualities of his last wife, and Scheherazade's wit alone has preserved the memory of her royal husband. The tradition of thirteenth-century society still rules the French stage. The struggle between two strong-willed women to control one weak-willed man is the usual motive of the French drama in the nineteenth century, as it was the whole motive of Partenopeus of Blois, one of the best twelfth-century romans; and Joinville described it, in the middle of the thirteenth, as the leading motive in the court of Saint Louis, with Queen Blanche and Queen Margaret for players, and Saint Louis himself for p.a.w.n.

One has only to look at the common, so-called Elzevirian, volume of thirteenth-century nouvelles to see the Frenchman as he saw himself.

The story of "La Comtesse de Ponthieu" is the more Shakespearean, but "La Belle Jehanne" is the more natural and lifelike. The plot is the common masculine intrigue against the woman, which was used over and over again before Shakespeare appropriated it in "Much Ado"; but its French development is rather in the line of "All's Well." The fair Jeanne, married to a penniless knight, not at all by her choice, but only because he was a favourite of her father's, was a woman of the true twelfth-century type. She broke the head of the traitor, and when he, with his masculine falseness, caused her husband to desert her, she disguised herself as a squire and followed Sir Robert to Ma.r.s.eilles in search of service in war, for the poor knight could get no other means of livelihood. Robert was the husband, and the wife, in entering his service as squire without pay, called herself John:--

Molt fu mesire Robiers dolans cant il vint a Ma.r.s.elle de cou k'il n'oi parler de nulle chose ki fust ou pais; si dist a Jehan:

--Ke ferons nous? Vous m'aves preste de vos deniers la vostre mierchi, si les vos renderai car je venderai mon palefroi et m'acuiterai a vous.

--Sire, dist Jehans, crees moi se il vous plaist je vous dirai ke nous ferons; jou ai bien ench.o.r.e c sous de tournois, s'll vous plaist je venderai nos ii chevaus et en ferai deniers; et je suis li miousdres boulengiers ke vous sacies, si ferai pain francois et je ne douc mie ke je ne gaagne bien et largement mon depens.

--Jehans, dist mesire Robiers, je m'otroi del tout a faire votre volente

Et lendemam vendi Jehans ses .ii. chevaux X livres de tornois, et achata son ble et le fist muire, et achata des corbelles et coumencha a faire pain francois si bon et si bien fait k'il en vendoit plus ke li doi melleur boulengier de la ville, et fist tant dedens les ii ans k'il ot bien c livres de katel. Lors dist Jehans a son segnour:

--Je lo bien que nous louons une tres grant mason et jou akaterai del vin et hierbegerai la bonne gent

--Jehan, dist mesire Robiers, faites a vo volente kar je l'otroi et si me loc molt de vous.

Jehans loua une mason grant et bielle, et si hierbrega la bonne gent et gaegnoit ases a plente, et viestoit son segnour biellement et richement, et avoit mesire Robiers son palefroi et aloit boire et mengier aveukes les plus vallans de la ville, et Jehans li envoioit vins et viandes ke tout cil ki o lui conpagnoient s'en esmervelloient. Si gaegna tant ke dedens .iiii ans il gaegna plus de ccc livres de meuble sains son harnois qui valoit bien .L. livres.

Much was Sir Robert grieved when he came to Ma.r.s.eilles and found that there was no talk of anything doing in the country, and he said to John: "What shall we do? You have lent me your money, I thank you, and will repay you, for I will sell my palfrey and discharge the debt to you."

"Sir," said John, "trust to me, if you please, I will tell you what we will do, I have still a hundred sous, if you please I will sell our two horses and turn them into money, and I am the best baker you ever knew, I will make French bread, and I've no doubt I shall pay my expenses well and make money"

"John," said Sir Robert, "I agree wholly to do whatever you like"

And the next day John sold their two horse for ten pounds, and bought his wheat and had it ground, and bought baskets, and began to make French bread so good and so well made that he sold more of it than the two best bakers in the city, and made so much within two years that he had a good hundred pound property Then he said to his lord "I advise our hiring a very large house, and I will buy wine and will keep lodgings for good society

"John," said Sir Robert, "do what you please, for I grant it, and am greatly pleased with you."

John hired a large and fine house and lodged the best people and gained a great plenty, and dressed his master handsomely and richly, and Sir Robert kept his palfrey and went out to eat and drink with the best people of the city, and John sent them such wines and food that all his companions marvelled at it. He made so much that within four years he gained more than three hundred pounds in money besides clothes, etc, well worth fifty.

The docile obedience of the man to the woman seemed as reasonable to the thirteenth century as the devotion of the woman to the man, not because she loved him, for there was no question of love, but because he was HER man, and she owned him as though he were child.

The tale went on to develop her character always in the same sense.

When she was ready, Jeanne broke up the establishment at Ma.r.s.eilles, brought her husband back to Hainault, and made him, without knowing her object, kill the traitor and redress her wrongs. Then after seven years' patient waiting, she revealed herself and resumed her place.

If you care to see the same type developed to its highest capacity, go to the theatre the first time some ambitious actress attempts the part of Lady Macbeth. Shakespeare realized the thirteenth-century woman more vividly than the thirteenth-century poets ever did; but that is no new thing to say of Shakespeare. The author of "La Comtesse de Ponthieu" made no bad sketch of the character. These are fictions, but the Chronicles contain the names of women by scores who were the originals of the sketch. The society which Orderic described in Normandy--the generation of the first crusade--produced a great variety of Lady Macbeths. In the country of Evreux, about 1100, Orderic says that "a worse than civil war was waged between two powerful brothers, and the mischief was fomented by the spiteful jealousy of their haughty wives. The Countess Havise of Evreux took offence at some taunts uttered by Isabel de Conches,--wife of Ralph, the Seigneur of Conches, some ten miles from Evreux,--and used all her influence with her husband, Count William, and his barons, to make trouble ... Both the ladies who stirred up these fierce enmities were great talkers and spirited as well as handsome; they ruled their husbands, oppressed their va.s.sals, and inspired terror in various ways. But still their characters were very different.

Havise had wit and eloquence, but she was cruel and avaricious.

Isabel was generous, enterprising, and gay, so that she was beloved and esteemed by those about her. She rode in knight's armour when her va.s.sals were called to war, and showed as much daring among men- at-arms and mounted knights as Camilla ..." More than three hundred years afterwards, far off in the Vosges, from a village never heard of, appeared a common peasant of seventeen years old, a girl without birth, education, wealth, or claim of any sort to consideration, who made her way to Chinon and claimed from Charles VII a commission to lead his army against the English. Neither the king nor the court had faith in her, and yet the commission was given, and the rank- and-file showed again that the true Frenchman had more confidence in the woman than in the man, no matter what the gossips might say. No one was surprised when Jeanne did what she promised, or when the men burned her for doing it. There were Jeannes in every village.

Ridicule was powerless against them. Even Voltaire became what the French call frankly "bete," in trying it.

Eleanor of Guienne was the greatest of all Frenchwomen. Her decision was law, whether in Bordeaux or Poitiers, in Paris or in Palestine, in London or in Normandy; in the court of Louis VII, or in that of Henry II, or in her own Court of Love. For fifteen years she was Queen of France; for fifty she was Queen in England; for eighty or thereabouts she was equivalent to Queen over Guienne. No other Frenchwoman ever had such rule. Unfortunately, as Queen of France, she struck against an authority greater than her own, that of Saint Bernard, and after combating it, with Suger's help, from 1137 until 1152, the monk at last gained such mastery that Eleanor quitted the country and Suger died. She was not a person to accept defeat. She royally divorced her husband and went back to her own kingdom of Guienne. Neither Louis nor Bernard dared to stop her, or to hold her territories from her, but they put the best face they could on their defeat by proclaiming her as a person of irregular conduct. The irregularity would not have stood in their way, if they had dared to stand in hers, but Louis was much the weaker, and made himself weaker still by allowing her to leave him for the sake of Henry of Anjou, a story of a sort that rarely raised the respect in which French kings were held by French society. Probably politics had more to do with the matter than personal attachments, for Eleanor was a great ruler, the equal of any ordinary king, and more powerful than most kings living in 1152. If she deserted France in order to join the enemies of France, she had serious reasons besides love for young Henry of Anjou; but in any case she did, as usual, what pleased her, and forced Louis to p.r.o.nounce the divorce at a council held at Beaugency, March 18, 1152, on the usual pretext of relations.h.i.+p. The humours of the twelfth century were Shakespearean.

Eleanor, having obtained her divorce at Beaugency, to the deep regret of all Frenchmen, started at once for Poitiers, knowing how unsafe she was in any territory but her own. Beaugency is on the Loire, between Orleans and Blois, and Eleanor's first night was at Blois, or should have been; but she was told, on arriving, that Count Thibaut of Blois, undeterred by King Louis's experience, was making plans to detain her, with perfectly honourable views of marriage; and, as she seems at least not to have been in love with Thibaut, she was obliged to depart at once, in the night, to Tours.

A night journey on horseback from Blois to Tours in the middle of March can have been no pleasure-trip, even in 1152; but, on arriving at Tours in the morning, Eleanor found that her lovers were still so dangerously near that she set forward at once on the road to Poitiers. As she approached her own territory she learned that Geoffrey of Anjou, the younger brother of her intended husband, was waiting for her at the border, with views of marriage as strictly honourable as those of all the others. She was driven to take another road, and at last got safe to Poitiers.

About no figure in the Middle Ages, man or woman, did so many legends grow, and with such freedom, as about Eleanor, whose strength appealed to French sympathies and whose adventures appealed to their imagination. They never forgave Louis for letting her go.