came a minstrel to ask for a lodging, but he met with an unfriendly reception, was treated only with black bread and water to drink, and was shown to a hard bed of straw. Minstrels were not usually treated in this inhospitable manner, and our guest resolved to be revenged. He left the abbey next morning, and a little way on his journey he met the abbot, who was returning home from a short absence. “God bless you, good abbot!” he said, “for the noble hospitality which has been shown to me this night by your monks. The master of your guest-house treated me with the choicest wines, and placed rich dishes on the table for me in such numbers, that I would not attempt to count them; and when I came away this morning, he gave me a pair of shoes, a girdle, and a knife.” The abbot hurried home in a furious rage, summoned the offending brother before a chapter, accused him of squandering away the property of the monastery, caused him to be flogged and dismissed from his office, and appointed in his place another, in whose inhospitable temper he could place entire confidence. These cases of want of hospitality were, however, exceptions to the general rule. A stranger was usually received with great kindness, each class of society, of course, more or less by its own class, though, under such circumstances, much less distinction of class was made than we might suppose. The aristocratic class, which included what we should now call the gentry, sought hospitality in the nearest castle; for a castle, as a matter of pride and ostentation, was, more or less, like an abbey, a place of hospitality for everybody. Among the richer and more refined classes, great care was taken to show proper courtesy to strangers, according to their rank. In the case of a knight, the lord of the house and his lady, with their damsels, led him into a private room, took off his armour, and often his clothes, and gave him a change of apparel, after careful ablution. A scene of this kind is represented in the accompanying cut (No. 222), taken from a manuscript of the romance of “Lancelot,” of the fourteenth century, in the National Library in Paris (No. 6956). The host or his lady sometimes washed the stranger’s feet themselves. Thus, in the fabliau quoted above, when the hermit and his companion sought a lodging at the house of a _bourgeois_, they were received without question, and their hosts washed their feet, and then gave them plenty to eat and drink, and a bed:-- _Li hoste orent leur piez lavez,_ _Bien sont peu et abreviez;_ _Jusqu’ au jor à ese se jurent._