With narrative, no doubt, the minstrels of highest repute mainly occupied themselves. Harp or _vielle_ in hand they beguiled many a long hour for knight and _châtelaine_ with the interminable _chansons de gestes_ in honour of Charlemagne and his heroic band[291], or, when the vogue of these waned, as in time it did, with the less primitive _romans d’aventure_, of which those that clustered round the Keltic Arthur were the widest famed. Even so their repertory was not exhausted. They had _lais_, _dits_ and _contes_ of every kind; the devout _contes_ that Thomas de Cabham loved, historical _contes_, romantic _contes_ of less alarming proportions than the genuine _romans_. And for the _bourgeoisie_ they had those improper, witty _fabliaux_, so racy of the French soil, in which the _esprit gaulois_, as we know it, found its first and not its least characteristic expression. In most of these types the music of the instrument bore its part. The shorter _lais_ were often accompanied musically throughout[292]. The longer poems were delivered in a chant or recitative, the monotony of which was broken at intervals by a phrase or two of intercalated melody, while during the rest of the performance a few perfunctory notes served to sustain the voice[293]. And at times, especially in the later days of minstrelsy, the harp or _vielle_ was laid aside altogether, and the singer became a mere story-teller. The antithesis, no infrequent one, between minstrel, and _fabulator_, _narrator_, _fableor_, _conteor, estour_, _disour_, _segger_, though all these are themselves elsewhere classed as minstrels, sufficiently suggests this[294]. It was principally, one may surmise, the _dits_ and _fabliaux_ that lent themselves to unmusical narration; and when prose crept in, as in time it did, even before reading became universal, it can hardly have been sung. An interesting example is afforded by _Aucassin et Nicolete_, which is what is known as a _cantefable_. That is to say, it is written in alternate sections of verse and prose. The former have, in the Paris manuscript, a musical accompaniment, and are introduced with the words ‘_Or se cante_’; the latter have no music, and the introduction ‘_Or content et dient et fablent_.’