To the great influence of noble ladies on public opinion, and to the _esprit de corps_ evinced by their recorded words and doings, we have to trace back the general and time-honoured idea of the ladies’ tribunal, or ‘court of love.’ To us in England Chaucer’s poem of that title has sanctioned the name.[30] A prettier picture moreover can hardly be imagined than that drawn by many old and modern writers of an assembly of beautiful women sitting in judgment on guilty lovers, and gravely deciding knotty points of the amorous code. The slight tinge of pedantry in such a picture only adds to its mediæval quaintness. The only drawback is that, like so many other pretty and quaint pictures, it has no counterpart in the reality of things; not as far, at least, as the south of France and the times of the troubadours are concerned. Friederich Diez, the lately deceased great philologist to whom the history of Romance literature and languages owes so much, has once and for ever destroyed the fable of the ‘courts of love’ in connection with the troubadours. This was done in 1825; but ever since the uprooted notion has gone on producing fresh and powerful shoots in the fertile soil of periodical and generally unscientific literature. It is, indeed, one of the few dainties of genuine or pseudo-Provençal composition which have been frequently and _ad nauseam_ dished up to the general reader of this country. The state of the case is briefly this:— In 1817 the well-known French scholar, M. Raynouard, published his large collection of Provençal poems, entitled ‘Choix des Poésies originales des Troubadours.’ In the second volume of this work he has inserted a long and elaborate inquiry of his own into the subject of the ‘courts of love.’ He determines the period of their duration as the time from the middle of the twelfth to the end of the fourteenth century or thereabouts, and gives a somewhat minute description of the legal and polite customs observed at these extraordinary tribunals. According to him the members of the court were noble ladies guided by a written code of love, their decisions again making precedent. An appeal to a different tribunal was admissible. The parties had, as a rule, to plead their cause in person; at other times, however, written documents—affidavits, as we should say—were accepted, the latter frequently taking the form of _tensos_. To these _tensos_, therefore, we ought to look for some confirmation of these statements; and, according to Raynouard, such confirmation is forthcoming in more than sufficient abundance. It is, as we know, the custom in these songs of contention for the two disputants to refer their case to the arbitration of third parties. ‘This _tenso_ will last for ever,’ says one troubadour, after having exhausted his arguments. ‘Let us take our cause to the Dauphin; he will decide and conclude it in peace.’ But here is the rub. The umpires mentioned on