The decadence of chivalry--and when one is speaking of human institutions, sooner or later this word must be used--perhaps set in sooner than historians can believe. We need not attach too much importance to the grumblings of certain poets, who complain of their time with an evidently exaggerated bitterness, and we do not care for our own part to take literally the testimony of the unknown author of _La Vie de Saint Alexis_, who exclaims--about the middle of the eleventh century--that everything is degenerate and all is lost! Thus: "In olden times the world was good. Justice and love were springs of action in it. People then had faith, which has disappeared from amongst us. The world is entirely changed. The world has lost its healthy color. It is pale--it has grown old. It is growing worse, and will soon cease altogether." The poet exaggerates in a very singular manner the evil which he perceives around him, and one might aver that, far from bordering upon old age, chivalry was then almost in the very zenith of its glory. The twelfth century was its apogee, and it was not until the thirteenth that it manifested the first symptoms of decay. "_Li maus est moult want_" exclaims the author of _Godfrey de Bouillon_, and he adds, sadly, "_Tos li biens est finés_." He was more correct in speaking thus than was the author of _Saint Alexis_ in his complainings, for the decadence of chivalry actually commenced in his time. And it is not unreasonable to inquire into the causes of its decay. _The Romance of the Round Table_, which in the opinion of prepossessed or thoughtless critics appears so profoundly chivalrous, may be considered one of the works which hastened the downfall of chivalry. We are aware that by this seeming paradox we shall probably scandalize some of our readers, who look upon these adventurous cavaliers as veritable knights. What does it matter? _Avienne que puet_. The heroes of our _chansons de geste_ are really the authorized representatives and types of the society of their time, and not those fine adventure-seeking individuals who have been so brilliantly sketched by the pencil of Crétien de Troyes.