[Footnote 130: _Romancero Francais_, p. 66.] Then there is the group, among the oldest and the best of all, assigned to Audefroy le Batard--a most delectable garland, which tells how the loves of Gerard and Fair Isabel are delayed (with the refrain "et joie atent Gerars"), and how the joy comes at last; of "belle Ydoine" and her at first ill-starred passion for "li cuens [the Count] Garsiles"; of Beatrix and Guy; of Argentine, whose husband better loved another; of Guy the second, who _aima Emmelot de foi_--all charming pieces of early verse. And then there are hundreds of others, assigned or anonymous, in every tone, from the rather unreasonable request of the lady who demands-- "Por coi me bast mes maris? laysette!" immediately answering her own question by confessing that he has found her embracing her lover, and threatening further justification; through the less impudent but still not exactly correct morality of "Henri and Aiglentine," to the blameless loves of Roland and "Bele Erembors" and the _moniage_ of "Bele Doette" after her lover's death, with the words-- "Tant mar i fustes, cuens Do, frans de nature, por vostre aor vestrai je la haire ne sur mon cors n'arai pelice vaire." This conduct differs sufficiently from that of the unnamed heroine of another song, who in the sweetest and smoothest of verse bids her husband never to mind if she stays with her lover that night, for the night is very short, and he, the husband, shall have her back to-morrow! And besides the morality, perverse or touching, the quaint manners, the charming unusual names or forms of names, Oriour, Oriolanz, Ysabiaus, Aigline,--there are delightful fancies, borrowed often since:-- "Li rossignox est mon pere, Qui chante sur la ramee el plus haut boscage; La seraine ele est ma mere, qui chante en la mer salee el plus haut rivage." Something in the very sound of the language keeps for us the freshness of the imagery--the sweet-briar and the hawthorn, the mavis and the oriole--which has so long become _publica materies_. It is not withered and hackneyed by time and tongues as, save when genius touches it, it is now. The dew is still on all of it; and, thanks to the dead language, the dead manners, it will always be on. All is just near enough to us for it to be enjoyed, as we cannot enjoy antiquity or the East; and yet the "wall of glass" which seven centuries interpose, while hiding nothing, keeps all intact, unhackneyed, strange, _fresh_. There may be better poetry in the world than these twelfth and thirteenth century French lyrics: there is certainly higher, grander, more respectable. But I doubt whether there is any sweeter or, in a certain sense, more poignant. The nightingale and the mermaid were justified of their children.