the harmlessness of the poet’s love affairs seems to be that the husbands concerned were more amused than offended by his homage to their wives. One of them, however, took the matter less easily. When Peire Vidal boasted in his usual way of having received many favours from his wife, he took his revenge by imprisoning the poet and piercing his tongue through. This anecdote of the old manuscript is confirmed by different allusions to the fact in the poems of other troubadours. The Monk of Montaudon, who mercilessly ridicules Peire Vidal’s follies, says that he ‘stands in need of a silver tongue.’ The first strong and genuine attachment the poet seems to have formed was for the Viscountess Azalais, of the family of Roca Martina, wife of Barrai de Baux, Viscount of Marseilles. She was praised for her beauty and kindness by many of the greatest troubadours, and it was for her that Folquet of Marseilles, the amorous poet and afterwards ascetic bishop, sang his tenderest _canzos_. Peire Vidal in his poems always calls her Vierna, one of the nicknames by which the troubadours (in the same way as the antique poets their Lesbias and Lalages) addressed for discretion’s sake the fair objects of their admiration. Peire Vidal’s love in this case, unlike his former transient passions, was of long duration. Even the severest treatment, and a long banishment from the lady’s presence, could not extinguish his affection. Far from her he was unhappy, and sent her his songs as messengers of love and devotion. At first she was well pleased with the homage of the celebrated poet who spread the renown of her beauty over all the country. Moreover, Barral her husband was on very friendly terms with Peire, and sometimes even had to compose the little differences which soon arose between the eccentric troubadour and his beloved one. The poet complained bitterly of her cruelty and ingratitude towards him who had always been faithful to her, but this grief of unanswered love was favourable to his poetic genius. To this period belong his most beautiful _canzos_, full of touching pathos and marked by great artistic perfection. ‘I was rich and happy,’ he says in one of these songs, ‘until my lady turned my joy to grief, for she behaves to me like a cruel and pitiless warrior. And she is wrong in doing so, for I never gave her occasion to complain of me, and have always been her most faithful admirer. But this very faithfulness she will never forgive me. I am like a bird which follows the hunter’s pipe, although it be to its certain death. So I expose my heart willingly to the thousands of arrows which she throws at me with her beautiful eyes.’ But presently he is afraid to offend her even by these modest complaints. In the _tornada_, he says, ‘O lady Vierna, I will not complain of you, but I think I deserve a little more recompense for all my waiting and hoping.’ Notwithstanding all these entreaties the lady had no pity for her unhappy lover.