It may not be out of place here to quote the charming love romance in narrative form entitled _Aucassin et Nicolette_, dating from the beginning of the thirteenth century, which had an undoubted influence upon the music of chivalry both in France and in Germany. It comprises twenty-one vocal pieces interspersed with twenty prose sections, which are to be read, not sung, as the superscription _Or se dient et content et flabloient_ indicates, in distinction from the _Or se cante_ of the verse sections. The verse also forms part of the narrative, with the exception of Aucassin’s song to the evening star, which is purely lyric but of the same musical treatment as the epic songs of the piece: [Illustration: Music] 1. E-stoi-le-te je te voi [Illustration: Music] 2. Que la lu-ne trait a soi (_and twelve more verses_) [Illustration: Music] 15. Suer douce a-mi-e. The second musical line here serves for thirteen successive text lines with continuous rhyme--another example of this most ancient method of cantilation. We must now pass on to the development of the love song, which seems to have been the special task of a gifted and celebrated race of knighthood, the glorious post-musicians called Troubadours and _Trouvères_ in France, and _Minnesinger_ in Germany. IV The Troubadours and _Trouvères_ (so called from _trobar_ or _trouver_--to find) were, in sharp contrast to the vagrant professional musicians, noble knights, who practised the graceful arts as gifted amateurs, primarily in the impassioned praise of woman and for the sole prize of her favor, with such zeal and superior intelligence that they soon outstripped in skill their meaner colleagues, who now became their servants. France was, it will be recalled, at this time, linguistically divided into two sections. The _langue d’Oc_ was spoken in the south and the _langue d’Oïl_ in the north. In the south, in Provence and Languedoc, the so-called Troubadour movement had its inception. 'That glorious land, endowed with all the charms of sunny skies, which surpassed all other European provinces in culture, prosperity, and spiritual contentment, was the cradle of this chivalry, with which are associated supreme sensual enjoyment, a passion for splendor, and the worship of women, thus uniting all the conditions of poetic art.’[76] Chivalry spread rapidly beyond the limits of these provinces, however, and across the Pyrenees, where lay the three Christian kingdoms of Castille-León, Navarre, and Aragón. Counts, dukes, and kings extended their patronage to this knightly poet-band and vied with each in attaching to their courts a brilliant assemblage of singers. The counts of Provence especially, Raimon Berengar III and his successors, the counts of Toulouse, Anjou, and Poitou, the kings of Aragón, Castille,