It is true, there are religious houses--nunneries--priories--for these, too, with noble and saintly prioresses, such as St. Hilda’s, St. Agatha’s, St. Margaret’s; all these bountiful in their charities, strict for most part in their discipline. To these cloistered schools may go the cousins, sisters, nieces of these saintly lady superiors; here they may learn of music, of embroidery, of letter-writing, and Christian carols--in Latin or English or French, as the case may be. If not an inmate of one of these quiet cloisters, our young thirteenth-century damsel will find large advantage in its neighborhood; in the interchange of kindly offices--in the loan of illuminated missals, of fruits, of flowers, of haunches of venison, and in the assurance that tenderest of nurses and consolers will be at hand in case of illness or disaster; and always there--an unfailing sanctuary. At home, within the dingy towers of a castle or squat Saxon homestead, with walls hung in tapestry, or made only half bright with the fire upon the hearthstone--with slits of windows filled with horn or translucent bits of skin--there must have been wearisome _ennui_. Yet even here there were the deft handmaids, cheery and companionable; the games--draughts of a surety (in rich houses the checkers being of jasper or rock crystal); the harp, too, and the falcons for a hunting bout in fair weather; the little garden within the court--with its eglantine, its pinks, its lilies fair. Possibly there may be also transcripts of old _chansons_ between ivory lids--images carven out of olive wood--relics brought to the castle by friendly knights from far-away Palestine. And travelling merchants find their way to such homes--bringing glass beads from Venice, and little dainty mirrors, just now the vogue in that great City by the Sea; and velvet and filigree head-dresses, and jewels and bits of tapestry from Flemish cities. Perhaps a minstrel--if the revenues of the family cannot retain one--will stroll up to the castle-gates of an evening, giving foretaste of his power by a merry snatch of song about Robin Hood, or Sir Guy, or the Nut Brown Maid. Some company of priests with a lordly abbot at their head, journeying up from St. Albans, may stop for a day, and kindle up with cheer the great hall, which will be fresh strown with aromatic herbs for the occasion; and so some solitary palmer, with scollop shell, may make the evening short with his story of travel across the desert; or--best of all--some returning knight, long looked for--half doubted--shall talk bravely of the splendors he has seen in the luxurious court of Charles of Anjou, where the chariot of his Queen was covered with velvet sprinkled with lilies of gold, and men-at-arms wore plumed helmets and jewelled collars; he may sing, too, snatches of those tender madrigals of Provence, and she--if Sister Nathalie has taught her thereto--may join in a roundelay, and the minstrel and harpist come clashing in to the _refrain_.