Of the _breu-doble_ (double-short), again, Guiraut Riquier is the inventor, and, as far as I am aware, the sole representative. In the poem of the kind which we possess from his pen he complains of the cruelty of his lady, to which he, in imitation of other troubadours, ascribes his adoption of this new mode of utterance. ‘As she will not accept my canzos at their worth,’ he says, ‘I write this breu-doble.’ There is nothing very remarkable about this form, which, for that reason perhaps, has met with little approbation amongst the elaborate rhymsters of the later epoch. The name ‘breu-doble’ has been a puzzle to modern scholars. Raynouard is inclined to derive it from the shortness of the poem, which, however, would by no means account for the ‘doble.’ To me it seems more likely that allusion is made in a slip-shod way to the last verse of each stanza, which, although not exactly half the length of, is at least considerably shorter than, the remainder of the lines, from which it also differs by its rhyme. Of greater importance than the _breu-doble_ is the _retroensa_, also known chiefly through Guiraut Riquier’s agency. The only striking feature of this form is the refrain which, against the usage of Provençal poetry, consists of more than one line. An exceedingly pretty poem, called in the MS. ‘The First Retroensa of Guiraut Riquier made in the year 1276,’ is devoted to the praise of the Catalans, renowned in the middle ages as models of knightly courtesy. ‘As my star has decreed,’ the poet says, ‘that good should not come to me from my lady, as nothing I can do will please her, as I am too weak to tear myself from her, it is time that I should be grounded in the ways of true love; and of these I can learn enough in gay Catalonia amongst the brave Catalans and their sweet ladies.’ On these he proceeds to shower every imaginable compliment through a number of stanzas all bearing the harmonious burden: Entrels Catalas valens E las domnas avinens.