Quant eu l’auzi desconortar, When I her heard lament Ves leis vengui jostal riu clar. To her I came near the brook clear. ‘Bela,’ fi m’eu, ‘per trop plorar ‘Beautiful one,’ said (myself) I, ‘by too much crying Afola cara e colors: Degenerates face and colour: E no vos qual dezesperar, And not you it beseems to despair, Que cel que fai lo bosc folhar For he who makes the bush bring forth leaves Vos pot donar de joi assatz.’ You can give of joys enough.’ ‘Senher,’ dis ela, ‘ben o cre, ‘Sir,’ said she, ‘well this I believe Que Deus aja de mi merce That God may have of me mercy En l’ autre segle per jasse, In the other world for ever Quon assatz d’ autres peccadors; As enough of other sinners; Mas sai mi tol aquela re But here me he takes that thing Don jois mi crec; mas pauc mi te Of which joy me grew; but little me he holds worth Que trop s’es de mi alonhatz. As too (far) (himself) he is from me gone. FOOTNOTES [1] Even the oldest Provençal poem of importance known to us, a popular version of the story of Boethius, belonging, according to Raynouard, to the tenth century, shows in most essential points the same grammatical structure as the language of the Troubadours, barring such irregularities and archaisms as are fully accounted for by the age and origin of the work. [2] The religious poems of the Vaudois, especially the celebrated ‘Noble Lesson,’ a medley of moral and dogmatic precepts, do not concern us, they being both by language and tendency entirely removed from the sphere of artistic literature. [3] A curious collection of all imaginable law cases, called ‘Albres de Batalhas,’ or ‘Tree of Contention,’ and written most likely originally in French, may be mentioned as throwing a curious though faint light on a recent controversy. One of the fictitious actions is between a Frenchman and a licentiate of London who has come to Paris to take his degree in the celebrated university of that city, a case of frequent occurrence, although ‘as every one knows the Kings of France and England are always at war with each other.’ In answer to some argument of the Englishman his antagonist exclaims in his boisterous way: ‘We Frenchmen don’t care about your laws or the _emperor_ who made them.’ What better precedent could the advocates of Queen Victoria’s new title demand than this testimony of an enemy, who curiously enough speaks of his own monarch as the king? [4] In one passage, it is true, he uses the words, ‘que ay escrichas questas razos,’ ‘I who have written these things,’ but that may be a shorter way for saying ‘dictated,’ which the expression in the text evidently indicates.