Not the least remarkable point about the chansons de geste is their vast extent. Their number, according to the strictest definition, exceeds 100, and the length of each chanson varies from 1000 lines, or thereabouts, to 20,000 or even 30,000. The entire mass, including, it may be supposed, the various versions and extensions of each chanson, is said to amount to between two and three million lines; and when, under the second empire, the publication of the whole Carolingian cycle was projected, it was estimated, taking the earliest versions alone, at over 300,000. The successive developments of the chansons de geste may be illustrated by the fortunes of _Huon de Bordeaux_, one of the most lively, varied and romantic of the older epics, and one which is interesting from the use made of it by Shakespeare, Wieland and Weber. In the oldest form now extant, though even this is probably not the original, _Huon_ consists of over 10,000 lines. A subsequent version contains 4000 more; and lastly, in the 14th century, a later poet has amplified the legend to the extent of 30,000 lines. When this point had been reached, _Huon_ began to be turned into prose, was with many of his fellows published and republished during the 15th and subsequent centuries, and retains, in the form of a roughly printed chap-book, the favour of the country districts of France to the present day. It is not, however, in the later versions that the special characteristics of the chansons de geste are to be looked for. Of those which we possess, one and one only, the _Chanson de Roland_, belongs in its present form to the 11th century. Their date of production extends, speaking roughly, from the 11th to the 14th century, their palmy days were the 11th and the 12th. After this latter period the Arthurian romances, with more complex attractions, became their rivals, and induced their authors to make great changes in their style and subject. But for a time they reigned supreme, and no better instance of their popularity can be given than the fact that manuscripts of them exist, not merely in every French dialect, but in many cases in a strange macaronic jargon of mingled French and Italian. Two classes of persons were concerned in them. There was the _trouvere_ who composed them, and the _jongleur_ who carried them about in manuscript or in his memory from castle to castle and sang them, intermixing frequent appeals to his auditory for silence, declarations of the novelty and the strict copyright character of the chanson, revilings of rival minstrels, and frequently requests for money in plain words. Not a few of the manuscripts which we now possess appear to have been actually used by the jongleur. But the names of the authors, the trouveres who actually composed them, are in very few cases known, those of copyists, continuators, and mere possessors of manuscripts having been often mistaken for them.