It was not so with prose. The Italian language, which could without difficulty adopt the Provençal metrical system, found no prose developed which it could take as a model. Latin was the only perfect type which it could imitate; but the complete absence of any declension, the relatively limited number of conjunctions, the impossibility of freeing itself completely from analytical order, which it experienced in common with all modern languages, did not allow it to be modelled on Cicero, as poetry was modelled on Bertrand de Born or Sordello. To reach this point of perfection two or three more centuries were needed, during which deep thinkers and great artists moulded this refractory material. It is true that the Latin historians, who were perfectly known, might have been taken as examples to be copied and even imitated; for these writers had treated the same kinds of subject which were again about to be attempted. However, there was one difference: ancient history, after all, was far distant, and the resemblance between the subjects was more apparent than real; or at least, if this resemblance really existed, men were too interested in the events to be able to judge them and compare them with others as coldly as we are accustomed to do. To sing the praises of his lady’s eyes, to express sentiments of fidelity or sadness, to paint chivalrous tournaments, it suffices to have read or to have listened to the Provençal troubadours, and the same words, with very few changes, can almost be transported from one language into the other. Imagine, on the other hand, a poor chronicler of the Middle Ages imitating Sallust or Titus Livius: could the vernacular furnish him with a single word to render those of his model--and the prose writer, accustomed to think in Latin, could he find in Italian a single expression equivalent to his thought? Whence could he have drawn that common fund of ideas and formulas which is so necessary to write a real history, however matter of fact, however little philosophic it might be? Even in order to relate facts, putting aside all thought of interest, one must have ideas.