No such ill odor, however, attends that game in which Conon delights most. To play at chess is part of an aristocratic education. In a jongleur's romance we hear of a young prince who was brought up "first to know his letters," and then "to play at tables (backgammon), and at chess; and soon he learned these games so well that no man in this world could 'mate' him." François and Anseau, the baron's sons, make no such boasts, but both know the moves, and François takes great pride in having lately forced a visiting knight to a stalemate. Great seigneurs and kings carry chessboards around with them on campaigns and are said to amuse themselves with chess problems immediately before or after desperate battles. Plenty of other anecdotes tell of short-tempered nobles who lost self-control when checkmated, broke the chessboards over their opponents' heads, and ended the contest in a regular brawl. This royal game has doubtless come from the Orient. Caliphs of the Infidels have long since boasted their skill in taking rooks and pawns, but in western lands about the first record comes from the time of Pope Alexander II (1061-73), to whom complaint was made that a bishop of Florence was "spending his evenings in the vanity of chess playing." The bishop's enemies alleged that this was forbidden by the canons prohibiting dice. But the bishop retorted that "dice and chess were entirely different things: the first sinful; the second a most honorable exercise for Christians." The Pope tactfully refrained from pressing the matter. Nevertheless, austere churchmen regarded the game as worldly, and impetuous religious reformers insisted on confounding it with games of chance. It was only in 1212 that a Council of Paris forbade French clerics to play chess, just as it (for about the thousandth time) forbade dice--despite which fact the Bishop of Pontdebois spent a whole afternoon over the chessboard the last time he visited the castle and could test his skill on the baron. As for the nobility, no one thinks of refusing to play, although naturally it is the older knights who have the patience for long contests. According to the _Song of Roland_, after Charlemagne's host had taken Cordova the Emperor and all his knights rested themselves in a shady garden. The more sedate leaders immediately played chess, although the younger champions selected the more exciting backgammon.