The exact antipodes of the _sestina_ is the _descort_, Anglicè discord, or dissonance. In the former everything is fixed by rule—position of rhymes, number and length of lines and stanzas. In the latter absolute liberty prevails regarding all these points, or rather it is the ambition of the poet to create the most bewildering divergence. But sometimes even the most glaring contrasts of metre are found insufficient, and an additional discordance of idiom is resorted to. Rambaut de Vaqueiras has employed no less than five different languages or dialects to complain of the cruelty of his lady. For, like the harsh rhymes of Arnaut Daniel, all these dissonant contrivances were attributed to the feeling of unrequited love, and Guiraut de Salinhac, in a very pretty little poem, distinctly says, ‘I should not compose a Discord if I met with accord and accordance at the hands of her I love.’ The inventor of this curious device is said to have been one Guerin d’Apelier, a poet not otherwise known to us. His claim to immortality may appear somewhat slender under such circumstances. Akin to the elaborate confusion of the _descort_ and about on a par with it as regards artistic merit, is the sudden lapse from poetry into prose, for which Rambaut of Orange is more especially responsible. Of Rambaut and his disastrous love-affair with Beatrice de Die, the poetess, we shall hear more hereafter. As a poet he belongs to, and is indeed amongst the earliest representatives of, the artificial school which culminates in Arnaut Daniel. Rambaut is by no means without skill, and according to his own statement, ‘no poet s work from the time Adam ate the apple was worth a turnip compared with his.’ But his devices frequently take the form of mere eccentricities, and he never induces us, perhaps never intends us, to forget the amateurish quality of his work. The mixture of poetry and prose alluded to in the above remarks well illustrates the lawless tendency of the noble poet.