From December till the end of March, life in the castle was perforce an idle one. War was rarely made in winter; there were no tourneys in the bitter weather, too cold for combatant or spectator; and in heavy snow time there was perforce a truce to hunting of the more vigorous kind. It would have been extravagant to rise before candlelight, so that it was after seven when knights and ladies left their curtained beds, washed their hands and face in rose-water, heard the Mass, and took their morning broth. Dinner, which in the summer was sometimes as early as nine, was sometimes in winter put as late as noon. And after dinner there was the siesta--the apparently inevitable siesta, sensible enough in summer heats after a morning already seven or eight hours old, but inexplicable during the best part of a winter’s day. Still, in all the novels and chronicles of the fourteenth century, I am bound to admit that, at all seasons of the year, after the principal meal, both men and women retire to sleep for at least a couple of hours. It is true the meal was long and heavy, and highly spiced. Still, in our visions of mediæval heroes we cannot imagine Charlemagne nodding after dinner every day, despite the assurance of Philippe Mouskes “that he always undressed himself and slept for two hours after the midday meal, holding the practice for a very wholesome one.”[58] We do not evoke Knight Percival and his companions as sleeping half the afternoon away. Yet-- “après le disner Se couchièrent ... à dormir Jusqu’al vespre sans nul espir. * * * * * Endroit vespre sont reveillé Le souper ont appareillié.”[59] Joinville mentions, as the most natural thing in the world, that St. Louis went to bed every day after the midday dinner until vespers; while the child Jehan de Saintré, Damp Abbez, the Dame des Belles Cousines, Pero Niño, the Dame de Sérifontaines, the Lady of Fayel, the Chastelain de Coucy, all the brood of fourteenth-century heroes and heroines, follow, in this respect, the example of their elders. Towards three o’clock, our dames and knights aroused themselves, took a slender meal of bread dipped in wine or hypocras, and preserved fruits, and then set out to vespers. We still are faithful to the afternoon-tea, but we have dropped the daily church service. After vespers the winter evening had closed in--the fourteenth-century evening ill-lit by flaring torches. It was fortunate if pedlar or pilgrim, minstrel or acrobat, knocked at the castle gate and demanded hospitality. Otherwise, despite the well-worn _facetiæ_ of Master Hausselicoq, the fool, the evening was apt to prove a trifle long.