Begon was left lying where he fell and his three dogs came back to him:-- Seul ont Begon en la forest laissié: Et jouste lui revindrent si trois chien, Hulent et braient com fuissent enragié. This most spirited passage of action and adventure shows the poet at his best; it is the sort of thing that he understands, and he carries it through without a mistake. It is followed by an attempt at another theme where something more is required of the author, and his success is not so perfect. He is drawn into the field of tragic emotion. Here, though his means are hardly sufficient for elaborate work, he sketches well. The character of Fromont when the news of his opponent's death is brought to him comes out as something of a different value from the sheer barbarism of _Raoul de Cambrai_. The narrative is light and wanting in depth, but there is no untruth and no dulness in the conception, and the author's meaning is perfectly clear. Fromont is different from the felons of his own household. Fromont is the adversary, but he is a gentleman. Even when he knows no more of the event than that a trespasser has been killed in the forest, he sends his men to bring in the body;-- Frans hons de l'autre doient avoir pitié --and when he sees who it is (_vif l'ot véu, mort le reconnut bien_) he breaks out into strong language against the churls who have killed the most courteous knight that ever bore arms. Mingled with this sentiment is the thought of all the trouble to come from the revival of the feud, but his vexation does not spring from mere self-interest. Fromondin his son is also angry with Thibaut his cousin; Thibaut ought to be flayed alive for his foul stroke. But while Fromondin is thinking of the shame of the murder which will be laid to the account of his father's house, Fromont's thought is more generous, a thought of respect and regret for his enemy. The tragedy of the feud continues after this; as before, Fromont is involved by his irrepressible kinsmen, and nothing comes of his good thoughts and intentions. Our wills and fates do so contrary run, Our thoughts are ours, the ends none of our own. This moral axiom is understood by the French author, and in an imaginative, not a didactic way, though his imagination is not strong enough to make much of it. In this free, rapid, and unforced narrative, that nothing might be wanting of the humanities of the French heroic poetry, there is added the lament for Begon, by his brother and his wife. Garin's lament is what the French epic can show in comparison with the famous lament for Lancelot at the end of the _Mort d'Arthur_:-- Ha! sire Begues, li Loherains a dit Frans chevaliers, corajeus et hardis! Fel et angris contre vos anemis Et dols et simples a trestoz vos amis! Tant mar i fustes, biaus frères, biaus amis!