At their worst they are often gross, often puerile, mere _contes pour rire_ from which the laughter has long ago faded; but at their best they interest by the very fact that they mark an early venture into the real. They show us plainly the figures of the time, knights that put their lands in pawn that they might follow tourneys, the rich bourgeois riding armed to one of the great fairs, the minstrel ready to recite a _chanson de geste_ or carry a love message. Light and gay, always brief and to the point, they tell good humoredly of the odd chances of life, they satirize manners and morals. Unlike the lays that idealize women, they ridicule them; and they are ready to mock the villein, the lords of the earth, or the saints in heaven. Often the story they tell is of eastern origin, often one of those stories that reappear in all times and among many races. Sometimes it is only a situation, a figure or two that they give us. Two minstrels meet and mock one another; each boasts his skill and decries that of the other, each enumerates his repertory, and in so doing hopelessly confuses the names and incidents of well-known romances of the time: "I know all about Kay the good knight; I know about Perceval of Blois, and of Pertenoble le Gallois." Each, as he brags, sets before us the stock in trade of the minstrel of the time; each shows his own utter incompetence,--and that is all the story. If the tale has a moral, as in _The Divided Blanket_, it is but the moral of common sense. If it tells a romance, as in _The Gray Palfrey_, it is still kept within the solid world of pounds and pence. We are told precisely concerning everybody's income. The heroine shows herself as accurate in her knowledge of the property of the hero's uncle as would one of the practical-minded damsels of Balzac. Her rescue is brought about not by the help of magic or knightly adventure, but by a lucky chance; the conclusion turns upon a sleepy escort and a horse's eagerness for his stable. Time and place, again, are definitely specified. In the lays it is usually, "Once upon a time," or "Of old, there lived a king," but _The Divided Blanket_ begins: "Some twenty years ago, a rich man of Abbeville left his home and came up to Paris."