And in the service of this love all means of defence, fair or foul, are thought permissible. Guillem betrays his kind master and benefactor, and afterwards, in order to save himself, calmly exposes the honour of a third person by an audacious falsehood. Raimon himself is quite willing to tolerate, or even to further, the poet’s intrigue with his wife’s sister; and the manner in which the lord and lady of Tarascon pay him back in his own coin displays the equally loose principles of those distinguished persons. The immediate discovery of the whole state of affairs on the part of the lady, moreover, betrays an acuteness of vision explainable only from personal experience of similar predicaments. When at last the long-abused husband discovers the intrigue, and takes cruel revenge, nobody seems to consider that he has been sinned against no less than sinning, and all true knights and lovers, the King of Aragon amongst them, hasten to punish the vile murderer, while the lovers are revered as saints and martyrs. Much as we may condemn the brutality of the husband’s revenge, or wish to excuse the fatal effects of irresistible passion, justice compels us to consider that the breach of the marriage vow was in this case aggravated by that of confidence, friendship, and fealty. But justice to a husband, as we know, was a thing unheard of in the code of Provençal gallantry—the very name was odious, and all but synonymous with criminal, or at least dupe. I do not, indeed, recollect a single instance amongst the numerous love-stories told in connection with the troubadours in which the object of passion was not a married lady; a strange point of affinity with the modern French novel to which I call the attention of those interested in national psychology. The final wedding-bells of English novels would be vainly listened for in Provençal fiction. If this frivolous conception of sacred ties repels our æsthetical and moral feelings, we cannot, on the other hand, refuse our sympathy to a passion so pure and so intense as that reflected in the _canzos_ of Guillem de Cabestanh. Only seven of his poems have been preserved to us, but these rank amongst the highest achievements of Provençal literature. In the whole range of international song I know of no sweeter lyric than Guillem’s ‘Lo jorn qu’eus vi domna premieramen,’ or that other _canzo_, which legend has connected with his death. The latter is also remarkable for its display of highest technical finish, while the remainder of Guillem’s songs are comparatively simple in structure, and contain few of those marvellous _tours de force_ of rhyme and metre which most troubadours delight in.