he says, ‘I should trample on all my enemies, for even as it is, when they hear my name, they are afraid of me more than the quail of the sparrow-hawk, because I am so strong and wild and ferocious; when I have put on my double white armour, and girt my sword round my loins, the ground trembles under me where I step, and there is no enemy of mine so bold as will not get out of my way as quickly as he can.’ He goes on in this strain through several stanzas, and promises at last that if the King returns to attack Toulouse, he, Peire Vidal, will enter the city alone with the routed enemy and conquer it. The story of Coriolanus may possibly have been in his mind, but there are not many traces of his acquaintance with ancient Roman history. As a reward for his prowess he looks forward to obtaining the much-desired knighthood, for in the tornada of the same _sirventes_ he promises Lady Vierna that soon she shall love in him a noble cavalier. This hope, however, was not fulfilled; he was obliged to be content with the knighthood which he had conferred on himself, and which of course other people did not recognise. Nevertheless, he remained invariably attached to Alfonso till the King’s death. This loss he felt very deeply, and the words in which he gives utterance to his grief show that his friendship was genuine. ‘In great affliction,’ he sings, ‘must live he who loses his good master, as I have lost the best whom death ever killed. Certainly, I should not live if suicide were not a sin.’ This song is dedicated to Peter II. of Aragon, the son of Alfonso, who is called ‘corn of a good ear.’ It was sent to him from the court of King Aimeric of Hungary, his brother-in-law, to which Peire had retired after the death of his protector, and where he appears to have seen something more of the Germans, whom he had always thoroughly disliked. In the same _sirventes_ he apostrophises them in the following words: ‘Germans, you mean, bad, and false people, nobody who ever served you has had any pleasure of it.’ On a former occasion he had expressed his feelings on the same subject even more energetically. ‘The Germans,’ he says in another _sirventes_, ‘are coarse and vulgar, and if one of them tries to be courteous he becomes quite intolerable; their language is like the barking of dogs. Therefore, I should not care to be Duke of Friesland, where I should always have to listen to the barking of these tiresome people.’ These terms applied to the language of Wolfram von Eschenbach and Walter von der Vogelweide must of course be taken _cum grano salis_, and are certainly more characteristic of the critic than of those criticised by him.