The beauty of the _pucelles_, as they are often termed in the French text, or maidens, is also spoken of as a subject of pride. In a metrical story printed by Meon (ii. 38), a great lady receiving a female stranger into her household, became so much attached to her, “that she made more of her than of all her maidens, of whom,” it is added, “there were handsome ones in her chambers”-- _De li la dame fet grant feste,_ _Plus que de totes ses puceles,_ _Dont en ses chambres a de beles._ And so, in the romance of “Blonde of Oxford” (p. 30), when the countess went with her maidens to visit John, the remark is made that among them there were plenty of beauties:-- _Et la contesse et ses puceles,_ _Dont ele avoit assés de beles._ The usual age for sending a boy to foster appears to have been seven years. That was the age at which Fulke Fitz-Warine was sent to Joce de Dynan in Ludlow Castle. “The lady,” the narrative tells us, “became with child; when she was delivered, at the time ordained by God, they called the child Fulke. And when the child was seven years old, they sent it to Joce de Dynan to teach and nourish; for Joce was a knight of good accomplishment. Joce received him with great honour and great affection, and educated him in his chambers with his own children.” Fulke the younger, in the next generation, was taken as his foster-child by the king (Henry II.), and was nourished and educated with the young princes, of whom John, in the sequel, proved a bad foster-brother. The great barons sought to form alliances of this kind with the king, as well as with his great ministers and other men of power. In the romance of “Garin le Loherain” (vol. i. p. 62), king Pepin gives the two orphan sons of Hervis of Metz, Garin and Begon, as foster-children to the count Hardrés, and they thus become severally the foster-brothers, or, as they are termed in the old French, _compains_ (companions), of his two sons, Begon being the foster-brother of Guillaume of Montclin, and Garin of Fromont. Although they belong to rival families, and are each other’s enemies through the turbulent scenes which form the subject of the story, the sentiment of the relationship by fostering often shows itself. This yearning after something beyond mere ordinary friendship seems to have been often felt in the middle ages, and led to various characteristic practices, among which one of the most remarkable was that of sworn brotherhood. Two men--they are generally knights--who felt a sufficiently strong sentiment towards each other, engaged, under the most solemn oaths, in a bond of fraternity for life, implying a constant and faithful friendship to each other. This practice enters largely into the plot of several of the mediæval romances, as in that of “Amis and Amiloun,” and in the curious English metrical romance of “King Athelston,” printed in the “Reliquiæ Antiquæ.” The desire for this true friendship was