There is no reason to doubt that in most cases the _tensos_ we find in the manuscripts are records of actual discussions sustained by different poets, either with the pen or by word of mouth. In many cases, however, the antagonists are as undoubtedly fictitious personages brought upon the scene for the purpose of displaying the author’s versatility of style and reasoning. Peirol, for instance, in a very pretty _tenso_, introduces Love himself as his antagonist. The god tries to shake the poet’s resolution to join the crusaders. ‘The Turks and Arabs,’ he pleads, ‘will never leave the Tower of David for all your invasions. I give you good and gentle counsel: Love and sing.’ But the poet remains firm. He cannot break his sacred promise. At the same time there is a ring of latent melancholy in his words when he admits that ‘many men must part, and leave their true loves in tears, who, if King Saladin did not exist, might have stayed at home joyfully.’ At other times the troubadours enter into discussion with antagonists who, although not absolutely symbolical or fabulous, yet distinctly bear the mark of a fictitious origin. Such a character, for instance, is the Genoese lady with whom Rambaut de Vaqueiras—one of the chief representatives of the _tenso_—holds amorous converse. The amorousness is, however, wholly one-sided, for the lady, the wife of an honest merchant, rejects the troubadour’s offers with utter contempt and with an energy of diction more creditable to her virtue than to her politeness. The vigour of her language is further increased by the homely dialect of her city in which she is made to speak, and which contrasts strikingly with the euphonious phrases of the courtly poet. But her virtue is proof against the most alluring charms of the _langue d’oc_. Adding insult to injury, she at last exclaims: ‘Mountebank, I don’t value your Provençal a Genoese farthing; I don’t understand you any more than I should a German or a native of Sardinia or Barbary.’ All this, it need hardly be added, is nothing but a clever skit of the troubadour’s own devising. To the same category also belongs the poem in which Peire Duran relates, at some length, the mutual grievances of a husband and wife on a matter intimately connected with domestic happiness. Another poem of the same class is remarkable by a deviation from the usual form. For instead of an entire stanza being allotted to each person, the speech here changes after every two lines, and at the end of the stanza after one line. The dialogue in this manner becomes decidedly more lively, but the abruptness of these incessant changes seems to have deterred other troubadours from adopting Albert’s innovation. Strictly speaking, the poem in question hardly comes under the definition of _tenso_ as established by the _Leys d’amors_; for instead of a discussion we have here nothing but assurances of mutual love and good will.