love, so that she accepted his suit, promised to bring his pupil to her feet, if she would but confer some sign of favour upon himself. She feigned an intention of compliance, but declared that, before she yielded, she must be indulged in a foolish whim which long had distracted her fancy. Aristotle then renewed his professions of devoted love, and she in sentences, broken by exclamations of apparent shame at her folly, vowed that she was dying to mount and ride upon the back of a wise man. He was now so passionately in love, that the fancies of his mistress appeared divinest wisdom to his mind, and he immediately threw himself along the ground in a crawling attitude. She seated herself in a gorgeous saddle which she placed on his back, and, throwing a rein round his neck, she urged him to proceed. In a few moments they reached the terrace under the royal apartments, and the king beheld the singular spectacle. A peal of laughter from the windows awoke the philosopher to a sense of his state, and when he saw his pupil he owned that youth might well yield to love, as it had power to break even the frost of age. Such was the lay of Aristotle which the wandering minstrel chanted in the baronial hall, and the damsel in her lady's bower, and the pleasing moral of the fable was not more sincerely echoed by the shouts of the gallant knights and squires than by the broken sighs of beauty. "Mark ye, who hear me, that no blameful shade Be thrown henceforth on gallant or on maid. For here, by grave example taught, we find That mighty love is master of mankind. Love conquers all, and love shall conquer still, Last the round world how long soe'er it will."[239] It is singular to observe that in the north and in the south, in Germany and in Languedoc, the love of the cavalier bore the same character, the same blending of tender and devotional feelings. The troubadour burned tapers, and caused masses to be said for the success of his love, and when the fervour of passion for his mistress was crossed by religious awe, he declared that the part of his heart which God held was still under the superior dominion of his lady-love. The German knight wrote poems to the honour of the Virgin Mary and the damsel of his heart, and it is not always easy to distinguish to which of these persons his vows are addressed.[240] He adored the shadow, nay, the very neighbourhood of his mistress, and declared that nothing could induce him to violate his vow of fidelity. Here, however, the resemblance ceases, for the knights of France, England, and Spain were not more highly distinguished for chivalric courtesy, than the Germans were remarkable for ferocity and savageness.[241] Once, and once only, were there courts of love in Germany. They were established by Frederic Barbarossa, and they did not long survive their founder. [Sidenote: Chivalric love the foe to feudal distinctions.]