chivalry, the lord of Catalonia. The empress, with the approval of her husband, goes to Barcelona, attended by a magnificent train and under conduct of two cardinals, to express her gratitude in person, and is very splendidly received and entertained. The oldest of the chroniclers, the Catalan Bernart Desclot, writing about 1300, ascribes the misfortune of the empress to a harmless partiality for a young nobleman, which was misrepresented to the emperor by two of his councillors, out of envy and spite.[53] The empress is allowed a year and a day to find a champion, in default of which she is to be burned. None of the knights to whom she has shown kindness dare offer themselves in her cause, on account of the high favor in which her accusers, who engage to make good their charge by battle, stand with their master. But a minstrel attached to the court takes it in hand to find her a defender, goes to Barcelona, and so interests the count in the case that he sets out immediately for Germany. Carbonell, c. 1500, Beuter, c. 1530, and Pujades, † 1635, all of whom rely in part on popular tradition, make the count to be Ramon Berengar III, and Beuter says that, according to the Catalans, the empress was Matilda, daughter of Henry I of England, who was married to the emperor Henry V in 1114.[54] Provençal chronicles, Cæsar de Nostradamus's Histoire et chronique de Provence, 1614, and La Royalle Couronne des Roys d'Arles, 1641, return to the baffled steward or maître d'hôtel and his revenge. The empress is Matilda in Nostradamus, as in Beuter, and the steward simply accuses her of adultery, and offers to sustain the charge by battle. No one dares to defend the lady, because the accuser is un fort rude et dangereux champion. The steward is hanged after his defeat. In La Royalle Couronne des Roys d'Arles the emperor is said to be Henry III and the empress Matilde, fille de Camet, qui avoit esté roy de Dannemarc et estoit roy d'Angleterre. The emperor Henry V was as king of Arles Henry III. Camet, whether miswritten or not, can mean only Canut, and there is an obvious confusion between Gunild, daughter of Cnut, wife of Henry III of Germany, and Matilda, daughter of Henry I of England, wife of Henry III of Arles and V of Germany.[55] This may be an historical blunder, pure and simple, or may have been occasioned by a knowledge of the tradition concerning Gunild. There is little or nothing in all these tales that can be historically authenticated, and much that is in plain contradiction with history.[56] Putting history out of the question, there is no footing firmer than air for him who would essay to trace the order of the development. Even if we exaggerate the poverty of human invention so far as to assume that there must have been a single source for stories so numerous and so diversified in the details, a simple exposition of the subject-matter, with subordinate connections, seems all that it is safe, at present, to attempt.[57]