A great part of the foregoing remarks apply exclusively to the aristocratic portion of society, which included all those who had the right to become knights. Through the whole extent of this portion of society one blood was believed to run, which was distinguished from that of all other classes by the title of “gentle blood.” The pride of gentle blood, which was one of the distinguishing characteristics of feudalism, was very great in the middle ages. It was believed that the mark of this blood could never disappear; and many of the mediæval stories turn upon the circumstance of a child of gentle blood having been stolen or abandoned in its earlier infancy, and bred up, without any knowledge of its origin, as a peasant among peasants, or as a burgher among burghers, but displaying, as it grew towards manhood, by its conduct, the unmistakable proofs of its gentle origin, in spite of education and example. The burgher class--the merchant or tradesman, or the manufacturer--appear always as money-getting and money-saving people, and individuals often became very rich. This circumstance became a temptation, on the one hand, to the aristocrat, whose tendency was usually, through his prodigality, to become poor, and, on the other, to the rich man of no blood, who sought to buy aristocratic alliances by his wealth, and intermarriages between the two classes were not very unfrequent. In most cases, at least in the romances and stories, it was an aristocratic young lady who became united with a wealthy merchant, and it was usually a stroke of selfish policy on the part of the lady’s father. In the fabliau of the “Vilain Mire” (Barbazan, ii. 1)--the origin of Molière’s “Médecin malgré lui,”--and in one or two other old stories, the aristocratic young lady is married to an agriculturist. Marriages of this description are represented as being never happy; the husband has no sympathy for his wife’s gentility, and, according to the code of “chivalry,” the lady was perfectly justified in being unfaithful to her husband as often as the liked, especially if she sinned with men who were superior to him in blood. It was common for the burgher class to ape gentility, even among people of a lower order; for the great merchant was often superior in education and in intelligence, as he was in wealth, to the great majority of the aristocratic class. In Chaucer, even the wife of the miller aspired to the aristocratic title of madame-- _Ther durste no wight clepe_ (call) _hir but madame_. --Cant. Tales, l. 3954. And in speaking of the wives of various burghers who joined in the pilgrimage, the poet remarks-- _It is right fair for to be clept_ (called) _madame_. --Ibid., l. 378.