Such is the model the Monk of Montaudon has chosen, and it must be owned that the disciple is worthy of the master. The monk’s acquaintance with the most intimate details of his rivals’ biographies would do credit to a modern interviewer. ‘As Peire of Alvernhe,’ he begins, ‘has sung about the troubadours of past days, I am going to do the same for those that have come since, and I hope they won’t be angry with me for exposing their evil doings.’ And then he sallies forth on his crusade of abuse, devoting with laudible equality the space of six verses to each victim, ‘a character dead at every stanza,’ as Sir Peter Teazle would say. The reader will be glad to hear that no mercy is shown to Peire of Alvernhe. ‘He wears his coat these thirty years,’ we are told. ‘He is as lean as firewood, and his singing is getting worse and worse. Since he has joined company with a lewd woman at Clermont, he has not made a single good song.’ ‘Arnaut Daniel (Petrarch’s “great master of love”) has never in his life written anything tolerable, but only composed stuff which nobody can understand.’ Folquet of Marseilles, whose conversion from a gay troubadour to a religious zealot has been briefly mentioned before, is reminded that his father was a pedlar. ‘He swore a foolish oath when he said he would write no more songs, and it has been said that he consciously perjured himself.’ But the most piercing darts of his quiver the monk reserves for a troubadour whose immeasurable vanity, almost bordering on madness, was indeed a tempting mark for the satirist. I am speaking of Peire Vidal, of whose life and works and follies the reader has had a full account. Only a few leading points need here be recapitulated. He was the son of a furrier, but had forgotten and made others forget his low origin. He believed himself to be an irresistible breaker of hearts, and had to pay dearly for his vain boasting of favours never granted. For a jealous husband, whose wife the Peire counted amongst his victims, had the poet’s tongue pierced, which, however, did not prevent the incorrigible braggart from continuing to call himself the dread of husbands, ‘who fear me worse than fire or pointed iron, God be thanked.’ At one time he took part in a crusade, and married a Greek lady at Cyprus, with whom he returned home. For some reason or other he imagined his wife to be the niece of the Greek Emperor, and, as her husband, claimed a right to the imperial throne. In the meantime he adopted the style and title of an Emperor, and even thought of equipping a fleet to enforce his right to the throne. His follies naturally excited universal merriment, and we need not wonder at finding the Monk amongst the foremost of the scoffers. ‘Peire Vidal,’ he exclaims, ‘is one of the very last of poets. He has not got all his limbs, and a tongue of silver would be desirable for him. Once he was a miserable furrier, but since he has dubbed himself a knight he has lost his last remnant of wits.’