But in spite of this emphatic declaration, M. Fauriel saw reason to call in question not only the authorship, but the very existence of the wise clerk of Tudela. The pretension of proficiency in the black art boldly put forward, seemed to him a suspicious circumstance, and his doubt was confirmed by linguistic difficulties, into which we cannot enter here. These latter, however, have been conclusively solved by more recent scholars, and William’s posthumous fame would be securely established, but for another circumstance fatal to at least part of his claim. Fauriel already had pointed out that after about the first third of the poem—at verse 2769 later scholars have determined—a sudden change takes place in the author’s opinions. Hitherto he has been a warm defender of the crusaders; the French invaders are called ‘our French barons,’ and the author would be thankful to any one ‘who would hang those robbers and villains who kill the crusaders.’ Folquet, the zealous Bishop of Toulouse, seems to him to have ‘no equal in kindness’ (‘degus de bontat ab el no s’aparelha’); and Simon de Montfort, the great enemy of Provence, is described as a ‘good cavalier, liberal and brave and kindly, sweet-tempered and open-hearted, and of good understanding.’ The heretical creed the author calls, as has been said, a ‘fola crezensa,’ and the full measure of his wrath is emptied on its adherents. He complacently relates the cruelties committed against them, and objects only to the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent and guilty.