Lastly, as illustrating the history of the amatory poetry of this age, I extract from Nostradamus[16] the story of the young Countess de Die; she loved and was beloved by the Chevalier d'Adhèmar: (ancestor I presume to that Chevalier d'Adhèmar who figures in the letters of Madame de Sevigné.) It was not in this case the lover who celebrated the charms of his mistress, but the lady, who, being an illustrious female Troubadour, "docte en poësie," celebrated the exploits and magnanimity of her lover. The Chevalier, proud of such a distinction, caused the verses of his mistress to be beautifully copied, and always carried them in his bosom; and whenever he was in the company of knights and ladies, he enchanted them by singing a couplet in his own praise out of his lady's book. The publicity thus given to their love, was quite in the spirit of the times, and does not appear to have injured the reputation of the Countess for immaculate virtue,[17] which Adhèmar would probably have defended with lance and spear, against any slanderous tongue which had dared to defame her. The conclusion of this romantic story is melancholy. Adhèmar heard a false report, that the Countess, whose purity and constancy he had so proudly maintained, had cast away her smiles on a rival: he fell sick with grief and bitterness of heart: the Countess, being informed of his state, set out, accompanied by her _mother_, and a long train of knights and ladies, to visit and comfort him with assurances of her fidelity; but when she appeared at his bed-side, and drew the curtain, it was already too late: Adhèmar expired in her arms. The Countess took the veil in the convent of St. Honoré, and died the same year _of grief_, says the chronicle;--and to conclude the tragedy characteristically, the mother of the young Countess buried her in the same grave with her lover, and raised a superb monument to the memory of both. The Countess de Die was one of the ten ladies who formed the _Court of Love_, held at Pierrefeu, (about 1194) and in which Estifanie de Baux presided. These Courts of Love, and the scenes they gave rise to, were certainly open to ridicule; the "belles et subtiles questions d'amour" which were there solemnly discussed, and decided by ladies of rank, were often absurd, and the decisions something worse: still the fanciful influence they gave to women on these subjects, and the gallantry they introduced into the intercourse between the sexes, had a tendency to soften the manners, to refine the language, and to tinge the sentiments and passions with a kind of philosophical mysticism. But these gay and gallant Courts of Love, the Provençal Troubadours, their lays, which for two centuries had been the delight of all ranks of people, and had spread music, love, and poetry through the land;--their language, which had been the chosen dialect of gallantry in every court of Europe,--were at once swept from the earth.