En paradis qu'ai-je a faire? Je n'i quier entrer, mais que j'aie Nicolete, ma très douce amie que j'aime tant.... Mais en enfer voil jou aler. Car en enfer vont li bel clerc et li bel cevalier, qui sont mort as tournois et as rices guerres, et li bien sergant, et li franc homme.... Avec ciax voil jou aler, mais que j'aie Nicolete, ma très douce amie, avec moi. [What have I to do in Paradise? I seek not to enter there, so that I have Nicolette, my most sweet friend, whom I love so well.... But to Hell will I go. For to Hell go the fine clerks and the fine knights, who have died in tourneys and in rich wars, and the brave soldiers and the free-born men.... With these will I go, so that I have Nicolette, my most sweet friend, with me.] --Aucassin, at once brave and naïf, sensuous and spiritual, is as much the type of the perfect medieval lover as Romeo, with his ardour and his vitality, is of the Renaissance one. But the poem--for in spite of the prose passages, the little work is in effect simply a poem--is not all sentiment and dreams. With admirable art the author has interspersed here and there contrasting episodes of realism or of absurdity; he has woven into his story a succession of vivid dialogues, and by means of an acute sense of observation he has succeeded in keeping his airy fantasy in touch with actual things. The description of Nicolette, escaping from her prison, and stepping out over the grass in her naked feet, with the daisies, as she treads on them, showing black against her whiteness, is a wonderful example of his power of combining imagination with detail, beauty with truth. Together with the _Chanson de Roland_--though in such an infinitely different style--_Aucassin et Nicolete_ represents the most valuable elements in the French poetry of this early age.