‘one hundred maidens.’ ‘And the priests,’ the manuscript continues, ‘do nothing but pray God for him and the Lady Bertha his wife. And he gave them a thousand marks free of taxes; and one can see well that he means to go there.’ Thus the Holy Church was the gainer, and having, as Mephistopheles says, ‘a good stomach able to digest ill-gotten pelf,’ she may, for all we know, have long rejoiced in the prosperity of the holy damsels. Whether Girart actually entered his pious institution the manuscript does not say; but such a close of such a career was by no means rare in the middle ages. CHAPTER III. THE ARTISTIC EPIC. The remains of the artistic epic, although scanty, are more numerous than those of popular origin. They were held in greater estimation, and therefore naturally had a better chance of being saved from oblivion. Moreover, the fact of their being recited without the aid of music made the reference to a written text more desirable than was the case with the popular tales which were chanted to popular tunes, and for the sole enjoyment of popular and uncritical audiences, not likely to resent arbitrary variations or slips of memory. Amongst courtly productions might be named the celebrated ‘Roman de Jauffre,’ describing the love-affair of that knight with the beautiful Brunesen, and other adventures, also the story of Guillem de la Bar, not long ago made public by M. Paul Meyer, from the sole manuscript in the possession of the Marquis de la Grange. The author of the latter poem is Arnaut Vidal, remarkable as the first winner of the golden violet at the ‘Jeux Floraux’ of Toulouse; the prize being justly awarded to him for a sweet song in praise of the Virgin, still extant. But all these attempts are thrown into the shade by a work which, quite apart from its philological and literary interest, is invaluable to the student of mediæval manners and customs. This is ‘Flamenca,’ a narrative poem in octosyllabic couplets, dating most likely from the first half of the thirteenth century. Copious extracts, and an analysis of the work, have been given by Raynouard in the first volume of his celebrated ‘Lexique Roman,’ and the whole has since been edited from the only manuscript in existence at Carcassonne, by M. Paul Meyer, who has added a translation into modern French (Paris, 1865). Unfortunately the beginning and the end of the poem are missing, and with the former the name of the author, frequently mentioned in the introductory lines of mediæval romances, has most probably been lost. It is therefore to an anonymous entity alone that we are able to concede the attributes of a scholar well versed in antique and contemporary literature, of a man of the world who knew the manners and morals of good society, and of a poet of genius.