The age greatly lauded virginity in the abstract. But—saving the saints in heaven and abbesses on earth—precedence in fact was given by the world of chivalry to the married woman. Public opinion required of wedded great dames—perhaps in most cases received—essential regard for their lords’ honour. This granted, for love they were let turn elsewhere. Theirs chiefly, though not solely, were the knights, the troubadours, the incense, the poesy. Marriage came so early, marriage was so plainly the rule, that the unwed in evidence—the throngs of nuns making another story—were almost always young girls indeed, buds of flowers, somewhat ill at ease with the opened roses. But largely they were of the rose kind, and, in the bloomy ring of wedded dames, sighed to in _canzons_, “fair friends” of knight and poet, but saw themselves a little further on. Those in the garden were not of the very youngest, and they were used to courts and not ill at ease. They were rosebuds very sweet, and they took their share of lauds. From them all the ugly princess differed subtly. It was not merely that she differed when faces were compared. What others might think could not of course appear, but the duke, who had considered an alliance with Roche-de-Frêne, thought her deficient in every power to please. It was right enough that, in the presence of her father and step-dame, before the perhaps oppressive loom of her own possible good fortune, she should keep silence. But she should look fair and complying, not be such an one that the world might say, “Our Duke chose a poor little land, under a gloomy sky!” And when she did speak she should speak with sense and _à propos_. As it was, she spoke folly. For instance. There had been introduced a jongleur, a Babylonish-looking fellow, who had narrated at length and with action the history of Dido. He had ended amid acclaim and had been given largesse. Following the lesser art and performer had come the major—burst into song the troubadours. They parted between them the passion of the Carthaginian Queen. One took the May of it, one the July, one the Winter. They soared to Olympus and pleaded it before the Court of Love; they came down to Europe and placed it in the eye of brave knights and sweet ladies. The duke was moved. He began to lean toward Alazais; then, policy and the beauty of a virtuous action prevailing, he bent instead toward the only one there who could link together his dukedom and Roche-de-Frêne. “Fair, sweet princess, what think you of this great lover, Queen Dido?” Then had the changeling shown oddness and folly. She lifted eyes that were _vair_ or changeable, and neither shy nor warm, and spoke in a voice as dry as a Candlemas reed. “I hold,” she said, “that in that matter of the bull’s hide, she was wise.”