BESIDE such a figure as that of Blanche de Castille, the women of whom we might next speak would seem pale ghosts, mere masks and shadows; and, even then, not always pleasing ones. There are, in fact, no immediate successors of Blanche and her daughter-in-law in the history of France; there is an interregnum, so to speak, of good, great, even of notorious women; in this inter-regnum, therefore, let us see how chivalry and literature were treating woman, what was the ideal, and what was the real woman in the artistic world at this time. Between the tenth and the sixteenth centuries Europe saw the birth, the growth, the culmination, the decay, and finally the displacement of those ideals and those customs which we associate with the word "chivalry." The subject of chivalry, interesting in itself, is also one of peculiar interest for us, since chivalry affected in no small degree the condition of women; but with its primal origin we shall not attempt to deal: we shall dig up no roots, but only do our best to describe the glorious tree itself and the soil in which it flourished. We shall find that chivalry, like all other earthly things, has its leprous spots, which one must keep out of sight if one would pour forth genuine and unchecked enthusiasm; yet the good and the bad alike must be understood if we would have a just conception of the whole. We have seen in the case of the troubadours something of the nature of the extravagant amorous devotion avowed for his lady by the knightly poet. Though this exaggerated passion and romance is one of the concomitants, it is not the fundamental idea or the best part of chivalry. Originally, perhaps, a mere association for mutual defence and support, the order of knighthood soon came to have a deeper and a better purpose, a wider significance; it assumed the sanctity of a religious institution, for which long years of careful preparation were deemed necessary, and which imposed serious duties.