In the summer, when there were tourneys and weddings and other festivities in the countryside, not only packmen passed and minstrels, but acrobats, conjurers who swallowed knives and lighted candles, keepers of learned pigs and clever dogs, owners of puppet-shows, dancers and jongleurs in plenty. They travelled from place to place, lodging in the castle or the village inn, always welcome guests in the monotony of country life. But all these visitors were rarer birds in winter. Then the long days were passed in chess-playing and tric-trac; heavy bets were laid and taken, and in the cumber of their idleness many a knight was ruined out of sheer _ennui_. Gambling was the curse of the noble, as it has always been the curse of every class trained to win and to desire, but with scant outlets for its energies. The knights in winter gambled pretty nearly all day long. We remember how the Servitor of Milun, entering a castle in the morning, finds in the great hall two knights playing chess, so absorbed that they do not see him.... “When Easter comes,” say the knights to Milun, “we will recommence our tournaments,” but until Easter there is no rival to their games of chance, except the eternal game of love. Chess was the baccarat, the bridge of the Middle Ages. In vain the king forbade it in 1369, in 1393, and both before and after, with every other game of hazard. But who was to enter the snowed-up country castle, to tell tales of knights and ladies playing the forbidden game? The women were almost as bad as the men. “Never play chess, save for love,” says the Knight de la Tour to his daughters: “ne soyez jamais grant jouaresses de tables.” And he proceeds to tell them melancholy tales of land, of money, and of women’s honour spent over the too enticing board. But, alas, good knight, the days are ill to pass in winter time! VIII So there was great joy when the trees began to redden: “Betweene Mersh and Averil When spray beginth to spring.”