“‘My lady,’ quoth he, ’tis Matheline de Courcy!’ “‘Ah, coward!’ cried my lady, ‘to choose a child like Matheline. Not that she be not a very fair maiden, and of an excellent house, better than thine. But what good, what profit, what honour, what comfort, what advantage, _what subsidy_, what aid and counsel can you find in the love of Matheline? She is but a lassie yet. Nay, you should choose a lady of high and noble birth, wise, and _with the wherewithal to help your fortunes_, and set you above necessity; and her should you love with perfect service, loyally and well, and in all honour. Be sure that in the end she will have mercy upon you, “et par ainsy deviendrez homme de bien.”’”[66] When we think that this harangue (and especially all that follows it) was penned by an ecclesiastic for the education of a prince, we perceive that our code of morals has changed. Young Saintré received large sums of money from his mistress, with no loss of honour, and the lady herself enters on her mission as on a sacred calling. “Although so young, she had, in her virtue, formed a Roman resolution never to remarry; but often she wished that her work in the world might be to train some young knight or squire and make him a pattern of chivalry.” It is with this high intention that she becomes the mistress of young Saintré; that she bestows her wealth upon him, and keeps him in due splendour of steed and apparel; that she preaches to him, with a sublime lack of logic, “how to flee the seven mortal sins”; that she finds him books to read, and stuffs him with quotation from Thales of Miletus, Chilon of Lacedemonia, Avicenna, Valerius Maximus, and Pittacus of Mitylene. To this end she persuades herself to a cruel separation, and sends him on his travels as knight-errant. She is, in fact, his mundane Beatrice. Her love for him is in truth a liberal education, and one that seems delightful and legitimate to her contemporaries. But our eyes see in her an ugly likeness to Madame de Warens, and we should say, in downright English, that she corrupts the lad. XI Virtuous or frail, the ladies of the Trecento, as of the two preceding centuries, were all alike as sisters in their loveliness. Or rather, we may say that only one type of beauty was recognized as such, all mediæval heroines were required to conform to that absolute standard. In our eyes the dark-eyed beauties of Murillo, the warm blondes of Titian and Palma, the slender angels of Perugino, the powdered _espiègle_ ladies of Gainsborough and Reynolds; the majestic form of the Venus of Milo, and the somewhat mannered elegance of Tanagra, are all, in their kind, types of accomplished beauty. Many different ideals have enlarged and exercised our taste. But, of all the candidates on our list, the Middle Ages would have admitted only the Perugino angel and the Tanagra statuette.