self-renunciation; he reproaches his lady for her coldness, complains that she has led him on by a show of kindness, has deceived him and will be the cause of his death; or his patience is at an end, he will live in spite of her and try his fortune elsewhere.[8] Such, in very general terms, is the course that might be followed in developing a well-worn theme, on which many variations are possible. The [19] most common form of introduction is a reference to the spring or winter, and to the influence of the seasons upon the poet's frame of mind or the desire of the lady or of his patron for a song. In song the poet seeks consolation for his miseries or hopes to increase the renown of his lady. As will be seen in the following chapter, manner was even more important than matter in troubadour lyrics, and commonplaces were revivified by intricate rime-schemes and stanza construction accompanied by new melodies. The conventional nature of the whole business may be partly attested by the fact that no undoubted instance of death or suicide for love has been handed down to us. Reference should here be made to a legendary institution which seems to have gripped the imagination of almost every tourist who writes a book of travels in Southern France, the so-called _Courts of Love_.[9] In modern times the famous Provençal scholar, Raynouard, attempted to demonstrate the existence of these institutions, relying upon the evidence of the _Art d'Aimer_ by André le Chapelain, a work written in the thirteenth century and upon the statements of Nostradamus (_Vies des plus célèbres et anciens poètes provençaux_, Lyons 1575). The latter writer, the younger brother of the famous prophet, was obviously well acquainted with Provençal literature and had access to sources of [20] information which are now lost to us. But instead of attempting to write history, he embellished the lives of the troubadours by drawing upon his own extremely fertile imagination when the actual facts seemed too dull or prosaic to arouse interest. He professed to have derived his information from a manuscript left by a learned monk, the _Moine des Iles d'Or_, of the monastery of St Honorat in the Ile de Lerins. The late M. Camille Chabaneau has shown that the story is a pure fiction, and that the monk's pretended name was an anagram upon the name of a friend of Nostradamus.[10] Hence it is almost impossible to separate the truth from the fiction in this book and any statements made by Nostradamus must be received with the utmost caution. André le Chapelain seems to have had no intention to deceive, but his knowledge of Provençal society was entirely second-hand, and his statements concerning the Courts of Love are no more worthy of credence than those of Nostradamus. According to these two unreliable authorities, courts for the decision of lovers' perplexities existed in Gascony, Provence, Avignon and elsewhere; the seat of justice was held by some famous lady,