story that an outraged husband had the troubadour's tongue cut out at an earlier period of his life contains an equal substratum of truth. The last period of his career was spent in Hungary and Lombardy. His political _sirventes_ show an insight into the affairs of his age, which is in strong contrast to the whimsicality which seems to have misguided his own life. Guillem de Cabestanh (between 1181 and 1196) deserves mention for the story which the Provençal biography has attached to his name, a Provençal variation of the thirteenth century romance of the _Châtelaine de Coucy_.[25] He belonged to the Roussillon district, on the borders of Catalonia and fell in love with the wife of his overlord, Raimon of Roussillon. Margarida or Seremonda, as she is respectively named in the two versions of the story, was attracted by Guillem's songs, with the result that Raimon's jealousy was aroused and meeting the troubadour one day, when he was out hunting, he killed him. The Provençal version proceeds as follows: he then took out the heart and sent it by a squire to the castle. He caused it to be roasted with pepper and gave it to his [74] wife to eat. And when she had eaten it, her lord told her what it was and she lost the power of sight and hearing. And when she came to herself, she said, "my lord, you have given me such good meat that never will I eat such meat again." He made at her to strike her but she threw herself from the window and was killed. Thereupon the barons of Catalonia and Aragon, led by King Alfonso, are said to have made a combined attack upon Raimon and to have ravaged his lands, in indignation at his barbarity. The Provençal biography, like the romance of the _Châtelain de Coucy_, belongs to the thirteenth century, and the story cannot be accepted as authentic. But the period of decadence had begun. By the close of the twelfth century the golden age of troubadour poetry was over. Guiraut de Bornelh's complaints that refinement was vanishing and that nobles were growing hard-hearted and avaricious soon became common-places in troubadour poetry. The extravagances of the previous age and the rise of a strong middle and commercial class diminished both the wealth and the influence of the nobles, while the peace of the country was further disturbed by theological disputes and by the rise of the Albigeois heresy. CHAPTER VI [75] THE ALBIGEOIS CRUSADE