Before we follow them to the castle, let us for a moment look back on the scene we have just witnessed. Time: the latter half of the twelfth century; place: a lonely wood in the South of France; actors: two men moved against each other by jealousy, fear, revenge, the consciousness of wrong inflicted and received—the strongest emotions, in short, of which the human heart is capable. Yet note the calmness and refined courtesy of their manner, the neatness of repartee in a conversation where life and honour are at stake. Guillem, it must be remembered, is at the mercy of his antagonist. Instead of meeting him man to man, Raimon might have thrown his vassal into a dungeon, or wrung his secret from him on the rack. No one would have dared to interfere with the mighty baron, or to breathe suspicion on his wife’s honour. I fear, indeed, that an ordinary retainer would not have met with such considerate treatment at Raimon’s hands. But Guillem was a poet of reputation, who could not be dealt with in a summary manner. Hence the terms of equality which Raimon grants him as a matter of course; hence even the offer of assistance in his love affairs. For troubadours were privileged persons. Every one knew that the ladies worshipped by them, under various _senhals_, or pseudonyms, were frequently the wives of the greatest nobles of the land. Raimon himself is quite willing to acknowledge this poetic licence, as long as his own wife is not concerned. It, at any rate, speaks well for the genuine quality of the Provençal love-song, to see how both Guillem and his patron treat its origin from anything but real passion as a total impossibility. But whatever the reader may think of the morality of the principles alluded to, he must admit that they imply a refinement of manner and sentiment, somewhat at variance with the popular notion of the semi-barbaric state of early mediæval culture. But still stranger events are in store for us.