Every page of early European history attests the sacred consideration of the minstrel, and the romances are full of stories, which at least our imagination can credit, of many a knight telling his soft tale in the dress of a love-singing poet. That dress had another claim to respect, for it was fashioned like a sacerdotal robe, as we learn from the story of two itinerant priests gaining admittance to a monastery, on the supposition of their being minstrels; but as soon as the fraud was discovered the poor ecclesiastics were beaten and driven from the monastery by their happier brethren.[190] The minstrel also was often arrayed in a dress of splendour, given to him by a baron in a moment of joyous generosity. The Earl of Foix, after a great festival, gave to heralds and minstrels the sum of five hundred franks; and he gave to the minstrels of his guest, the Duke of Tourrain, gowns of cloth of gold, furred with ermine, valued at two hundred franks.[191] [Sidenote: Romances.] There were other classes of poets in days of chivalry, who, under the names of troubadours, trouveurs, and minnesingers, were spread over all chivalric countries, and sang the qualities by which a knight could render himself agreeable to his mistress. The board of a baron was sometimes enlivened by a tenson, or dialogue in verse, on the comparative merits of love and war; and the argument was often supported by warmer feelings than those which could influence a hireling rhymer, for the harp of the troubadour was borne by kings, and lords, and knights. The romances, or poems longer than the minstrels' or troubadour lay, were also faithful ministers of chivalry. All their heroes were advocates of the church, and enemies of the Saracens and pagans. The perilous adventures of the Gothic knights, their high honor, tender gallantry, and solemn superstition were all recorded in romances[192], and there was not a bay window in a baronial hall without its chivalric volume, with which knights and squires drove away the lazy hours of peace. The fictitious tales of Arthur and Charlemagne were the study and amusement of the warrior in his moments of ease, and even the few relics of classical literature, which, after the Gothic storm, were cast on the shores of modern Europe, were fashioned anew by chivalry. The heroes of Troy were converted into knights, and Troilus and Cressida moved like a warrior and damsel of chivalric times. Indeed, as the tale of Troy Divine was occasioned by a lady, it blended very readily with the established fictions of the times. And the romancers, like the minstrels and troubadours, were highly favoured by the great, who knew that their actions, unless recorded by _clerc_, could have no duration, and therefore they often made handsome presents to authors in order to have their names recorded in never-dying histories.[193] [Sidenote: Conversation.] The conversation of knights, like their lives and literature, related only to love and war.