In the hem of her raiment are wrought the Greek characters Π and Θ as symbols of ‘la vita qui enter es’ and ‘la dreita lei.’ In the middle of this description the manuscript breaks off, and leaves no indication of what was to follow. The time of this interesting document is, as Diez has shown by linguistic reasons, not later than about 960; and its great age adds to its value for metrical purposes. The metre is essentially the same as in all French poems of the Charlemagne cycle, viz., the decasyllabic; and it is used in very nearly the same way. In both languages it was the rule to give the fourth syllable of each verse the strongest metrical accent, and thus to effect after this syllable the cæsura or ‘pauza de bordo’ which has been explained above. ‘Boethius’ has only verses con accen agut; and therefore to avoid monotony most of the pauzas are with accen greu, so that generally each line has eleven syllables, _e.g._: Nos jove _ó_mne | quandiu que nos estam de gran follía | per folledat parllam. The following lines afford examples of the masculine cæsura: E qui nos pais | que no murem de fam cui tan amet | Torquator Mallios. In a few cases, the second part of the verse contained one syllable less than usual, generally after a feminine pauza, which, as it were, covered this want, for instance: donz fo Boécis | corps ag bo e pro. In these cases it might almost be supposed that the cæsura had been left out by neglect. But this supposition is disproved by the fact that also after a pauza con accen agut the second half of the verse is shortened in the same manner, a phenomenon which can be explained only from the effect of the interval after the accent on the fourth syllable. An instance of this is the line: Qu’el era cóms | molt onraz e rix. Here the verse consists of only nine syllables. The metre in ‘Boethius’ could therefore vary from nine to ten or eleven syllables. This variety was even greater in other poems, where the feminine rhyme occurs together with the feminine pauza, so as to bring the length of the verse to twelve syllables, _e.g._: En autra térra | irai penre linhatge. The hiatus in the cæsura, as is evident from this and many other examples, was not considered a fault; and the first vowel was certainly pronounced. This seems to mark the transition to the more modern French heroic verse, the Alexandrine, which was not used in the old chanson de geste. In epic poetry also the position of the cæsura after the fourth syllable is almost universal. But there are some exceptions to this rule. In ‘Girartz de Rossilhon,’ the most important popular epic of the _langue d’oc_, the pauza del bordo occurs always after the sixth syllable, _e.g._: Vecvòs per miei l’estorn | lo vilh Draugo lo paire don Girárt | l’oncle Folco, or with feminine pauza and masculine ending of the verse: Tan vos vei entrels vóstres | queus an cobrit, or with both feminine: