stance: 'Be sure there are no wrinkles in your stockings; this is Ovid's express command.'

When Eleanor of Aquitaine, her daughter Marie of Champagne, and the other précieuses, had arrived through much discussion at a fairly clear idea of what they wanted, the work of compiling their canon law was confided to the author of the Art of Honorable Love, probably Andreas Capellanus, who was at once the Gerson and the Aquinas of the passion. No more amusing game was ever invented for the entertainment of polite society than the methodical discussion of love. It contained something for every one. Under cover of its high moral pretensions and scientific aims, anything could be said. The earnest and the frivolous, the amorous and the cool, the devout and the careless, all were furnished with a decorous means of approach to the most fascinating topic in the world. Two standards are visible in the Chaplain's work: the first, shorter and more famous code of law embodies a higher ideal of the subject in hand than the longer one. Concessions are made to the natural man. But on the whole, Ovid's metamorphosis is complete.

According to the Chaplain, one of the signs of a true lover is his physical disturbance in the presence of the beloved. It is an axiom of the science that the sudden sight of the lady alters the lover's circulation. The words are the words of Ovid; and the emotion is not just that of Sappho. Nevertheless, if a little good-will went to produce the vaso-motor disturbance which was the sign of love, it was applied with the intent, not to deceive the lady, but to play the game. The spirit of the code can be gathered from a few examples.

1. Marriage is not a valid excuse for love.

13. Common love seldom endures. 15. Every lover is wont to grow pale at sight of the beloved.

18. Virtue alone makes one worthy of love.

23. The thought of love makes a man sleep less and eat less.

24. Every action of the lover ends in thoughts of the beloved.

25. The true lover cares for nothing save what he deems pleasant to the beloved.

30. The true lover is forever and without interruption occupied by the image of the beloved.

Among the theses often debated by the learned in love were those that dealt with the relative desirability of a knight or a clerk as a lover; and as the clerks controlled the records they have, as far as literature goes, the best of it.

The debate was one of the most congenial exercises of the Middle Age. To defend a thesis was in some sort to ride a tilt. During the long centuries when the church was occupied with the 'chimæra bombinans in vacuo,' society dealt with questions of greater interest. A lady grieves for a lover taken in battle; a squire cannot cease to love a lady who despises him; which is the more worthy of pity? A fair lady, deserted by her first love, bestows her affections on a second; is she perjured?

The actual songs themselves of the troubadours and minnesingers, oddest of love-lyrics, are full of the spirit of scholasticism. Instead of the personal cry, they give an argument on the general case. Absorbed in a technical discussion of the nature of love, the poet sometimes forgot altogether to explain his personal interest in the subject. In many a song he lectured to his beloved on the psychology and ethics of their common experience. From the body he had worked his way up to the mind; before the movement was spent

The prevalence of formal discussion, the immense allegorical literature of the Courts of Love, and certain notices of the decisions of great ladies made arbiters in real cases, gave rise at one time to the notion that the Court of Love was an actual institution whose action was binding on lovers in its jurisdiction. It is generally admitted today, however, that the evidence never supported such a theory, and that therefore its intrinsic improbability is conclusive against it. Secrecy in love was among the lover's first duties. Loyalty, secrecy, and diligence are often given as his cardinal virtues. It is manifestly absurd to suppose that a sentiment which depended on concealment for its existence should be amenable to public inquiry.

IV

The professional troubadour might be attached to a court for a short time only, and without payment of any kind. The prizes of life consisted, for him, in permanent awards of land or office, and later of money. The commonest fate was half-way between these situations: he lived at court as an enlivener of society, and was furnished with bed and board, and in favorable cases with arms and clothing. The songs are full of prayers for the opportunity of service, and for the substantial reward of service. The pretty language of. feudal relations, easily sliding into allegory even then, gives romance to-day to the singer's cry. Not only to ladies, but to lords, he offers true and loyal service. Walther von der Vogelweide advertises that he is ready to serve any gentleman or lady who will reward him.

On the other hand, there was nothing in the relation of servant and

ing several singers at once. It is somewhat more singular that the singer was able to consecrate his genius to more than one lady at a time. He accomplished this logically by saying to each that her virtues ennobled her whole sex, so that all ladies were revered by him. The love of the professional troubadour was official. His business was to glorify his lady. It was his song that she wanted and rewarded, not his passion. Personally he was probably of no great importance to her. That is what he means by saying that timidity prevents him from declaring his love otherwise than in song. Often the singer felt obliged to assure the world that his lady was cruel and his wishes unfulfilled, Particularly in Germany, where manners were strict, the poet was careful not to be misunderstood. Only thus can we explain the fact that a literature by definition 'gay,' explicitly devised for the entertainment of a light-hearted society, should be filled with the pain of disappointed love.

Every singer makes the same protestations and complaints. It is his rhyme that he is thinking of. Every singer declares that all the others are making believe, he alone is serious. There are many traces of jealousy of the amateur, the lordly troubadour who may approach the lady in daily life, thus gaining a great advantage over his lowly competitor, and who sings for nothing. Generally the lady is named or identified. When a feigned name is used, it has the air of being as well known as the real one. It is unthinkable that a favored lover should thus compromise a great lady. Sometimes a song was addressed to a lady and her husband, to a lady and her brother, to a lady and her nephews! It is not maintained that the troubadour never felt love, nor is it likely that he could constantly handle fire with

If minnesong had consisted simply of the crude sensualism of the Maysong, the gallantry of Ovid, and the compliments of a court-singer, it would not have survived to have a lasting effect on the literature of Europe. But a man did not live in the eleventh century or the twelfth for nothing: whether he were clerk or layman, he submitted to the feeling of the time that the 'eye of the heart' could see realities that the bodily eye could never find. St. Bernard and Bernard of Ventadorn were at one on this point. The thirtieth rule of Andreas Capellanus rested on it. The beautiful word Minne itself illustrates the history of the idea. The earliest singers of Germany do not use it; Friuntschaft and Liebe are their words for love. The root-meaning of minnen is to think of. Its gradual prevalence accompanies the transfer of sexual love into the spiritual life. The love of a lady whom the lover has never seen occurs in romantic literature every

where, from the Arabian Nights to the Nibelungenlied. In courteous love it became classic.

The dream was a glimpse of reality in the Middle Age. Monk or nun dreamed of salvation, often with an erotic tinge. Love in a dream was the lover's solace. The misery of waking life was felt alike by saint and by lover. The thought of death was familiar, and not unwelcome to both. Ovid had spoken in sheer rhetoric of dying for love; the mediaval lover was ready to die in earnest. The love of a dead lady was often sung, with a cast forward to Beatrice. Tears are an innovation of the courteous lover. They are shed not at all in Beowulf, but sparingly in the Nibelungenlied, and hardly oftener in the chansons and early epics. But St. Bernard and the troubadour weep freely. The mystic, whether in love or in religion, was subject to ecstasy. The Lancelot of Chrétien de Troyes was twice in great bodily peril because the sudden sight of his lady bereft him of attention to the rest of his environment. The way is being prepared for Dante's swoon at the marriage-feast. In a word, the mysticism of the troubadour, passing into Italy and there modified, was adopted by the dolce stil nuovo and reached its climax in the work of the great poet of the Middle Age.

I CAN remember very well the pang I felt when my mother first asked me if I would like to go to Germany.

What? Leave my school, my home, my friends, and go no one knew where? Why, Europe was a place you went to when you were grown up, or when you were at any rate through school, and no doubt then was very nice. Of course you would be glad to go there some time; just so you might like some day more distant to get to heaven; but I think any little girl might be disconcerted by so sudden a proposal. And then the vision flashed into my mind of that dear summer cottage on the great river, with the boats and the swimming and the picnics. I felt that I could not bear it.

'O mother, must I? Oh, please, not this summer!' I appealed.

'Well, dear,' said my mother, 'you could stay with grandmother, of course, you know.'

She was surprised, I think, and a little disappointed.

But the prospect of being left behind was too much for me, and I began to discover symptoms of a desire for Europe.

So doubt and misgiving began the year that I must call beyond all others annus mirabilis, that long chapter of delight and wonder which, starting as a summer's outing, was to spread itself unaccountably over a whole delightful year. Reluctance had vanished with my first step on the great liner. We sailed for a port in Germany, but it was Fairyland that I set foot in when

we landed; surely in Fairyland, with its quaintly walled and towered cities, its princes and peasants, its black forests and enchanted mountains, that we traveled that summer. The Hartz, the Schwarzwald! No need to tell me that the fairy tales were born there; they were fairy tales of themselves. I have no space to dwell here on the vivid enchantment of those first few months abroad. I hardly knew that they were over when I knew also that they were to be followed by something yet more wonderful,—a whole year in Germany.

My parents had decided to spend the winter in a great university town where my father wished to work in the libraries, and one of the minor questions to be decided was what should be done with me. I had been taught the violin at home, and of course I was to continue here at the famous Conservatory, or at least with one of its famous masters. This one proved to be Herr Konrad Ritter, youngest and not least brilliant of the reigning triumvirate of the violins; and I was soon running to and from the Conservatory with my violin tucked under my arm.

'Ritters sind doch reizend!' one of our German acquaintances had said to us; and charming they seem to my older judgment as they seemed to me then. He was not the blond Teuton of commonplace type. He was the type of South German that has, in common with Frenchman or Italian, a certain dark and fiery distinction. Mephistopheles they called him at the Conservatory, and the sobriquet was perhaps

invited by his dark good looks, his height, and his occasionally somewhat alarming irony. Indeed, with the red cap and feather, the mantle and sword, his tall figure would have been well suited to the famous rôle, - well suited if you had not seen the smile and the kind eyes that made the name so patently a misnomer.

Herr Ritter's wife was one of the most beautiful women I have ever known. She was tall and fair and slender, with hair like pale gold and eyes like blue stars, as a German poet might have put it, and she was very gentle and lovely. She might have stood for the Princess out of some German fairy tale. I have since supposed that she was very young (I knew of course that she was younger than mother, who was very old - thirty-five at least), thirty-five at least), but to fifteen she seemed immeasurably remote, set in a starry heaven of her own.

It was through her and fortune that I was sent to my German school.

'Give her to Fräulein Schmidt,' said the beautiful lady when October was drawing on, and my mother asked her advice about the city schools. 'It is one of the greatest good fortunes of a girl's life to have come under her influence.'

'Is the school so fine?' asked my mother.

'Yes; but even if she learned nothing in the classes, she would have a liberal education in being with Fräulein Schmidt.'

My mother laughed a little. "That is saying a great deal,' she said. 'But if you are a sample of her products, I think she must try her hand on my little girl too.'

So presently, one golden September day, we went to see Fräulein Schmidt. There was nothing prepossessing, certainly, about a first view of her little domain. We entered an old house in

the Nordstrasse, climbed three flights of gloomy stairs, passed by the open doors of worn and dingy schoolrooms, and were shown at last into a quaint, sunny German salon, where a woman tall and large, a colossal woman, who might have weighed two hundred pounds, I thought, old, kindly, with a deep, sweet voice, welcomed us and talked with my mother. In earlier days she must have been of heroic mould. She had eyes black as sloes, eyes that could be sunshine or lightning, cheeks like a winter apple, and a great organ voice which could roll like thunder a terror to evil-doers! or soften to a caress. But this is what I learned afterwards. Now she patted me kindly on the head, asked me a few questions, and when I went away I was enrolled in the Höhere Töchterschule' of Fräulein Auguste Schmidt, and due to appear there next Monday morning at eight o'clock.

The ministrations of the German nurse whom I had had at home and detested heartily mea culpa, poor Helga! made it possible now for me to enter a class with girls of my own age; and in the first class accordingly I presently found myself, to my mingled discomfiture and satisfaction, the only foreigner in a group of girls who seemed to me formidably big and tall and clever. Here I spent a silent and unhappy morning, spoken to pleasantly indeed by my neighbors and then promptly forgotten. How quickly and readily they recited! Then, when the books were opened and the pens came out, what terrifying speed of dictation! How well they spoke French! And how many things they knew that I had never even heard of! Could I ever, ever, keep up with them? My only ray of comfort was a momentary feeling of superiority in the English class. After all, they too were mortal.

Noon came at last, and the girls