480 MEDIAEVAL LITERATURE. 



wonder and admiration at their western lord; for if it be true that 

 ■either of them does ample credit and honour to his crown it is clear 

 now that Charles is fully one foot and three inches taller than his 

 Oriental host. The French knights are delighted, and each of 

 them savs to himself: "How foolish it was of the queen to speak 

 as she did ! Experience teaches again and again : we Frenchmen 

 •cannot visit a country but we carry either a victory or a prize." 



After this happy issue they all enter the church, and Bishop 

 Turpin officiates at mass. A glorious banquet follows this cere- 

 mony; the most delightful wines are poured out into the silver 

 goblets, a profusion of the most delicious game and of peacocks is 

 piled upon the dishes. When all the guests are satisfied the saddles 

 are placed on the backs of the sturdy mules and the French knights 

 get themselves in readiness for the journey back. The leave-taking 

 is as cordial as it is cheerful; only one incident partly spoils it. 

 Hugo's poor daughter, desperately in love with Olivier, comes 

 running along, seizes the stalwart knight by his mustachios, and 

 beseeches him to take her with him to France. But the handsome 

 swain only bids the poor girl to keep green the memory of their 

 love, and laughing merrily proceeds alongside of his lord. 



After a happy journey they arrive in the good city of Paris. 

 Without delay Charles proceeds to St. Denis, and after reverently 

 depositing the most valuable of his holy relics on the altar of the 

 ■church he unexpectedly finds the queen all of a tremble and lying 

 on her knees at his feet in the chancel. She implores his forgive- 

 ness for her thoughtless behaviour and her foolish doubts. 

 ■Graciously the king holds out to her the hand of forgiveness, and 

 bids her rise to her feet for the sake of the Holy Sepulchre, where 

 it has been his privilege to worship, and soon after the old offence 

 was forgotten and condoned. Here the poem ends. 



It may be taken for granted that after reciting the nine 

 hundred alexandrines, the contents of which we have but very 

 roughly outlined in the summary above, the jongleur was rewarded 

 with a thundering applause. Maybe he was himself the author 

 of the poem; the comic flavour with which it is redolent throughout 

 is indeed much more suggestive of the droll buffoonery of a 

 jongleur, whose field of action is chiefly the city and country fairs 

 than of the severe solemnity of the trouvere, who only sang in 

 ■castle halls before the nobilitv, and who would surely have scorned 

 so fast and loose a . treatment of epic matter. The dignified 

 trouvere, fond as he was of long-winded poetry, full of repetitions 

 and parallelisms and digressions, would moreover not have con- 

 tented himself with the production of an epic of no more than 

 a paltry 900 verses; and it is doubtful also whether he would have 

 stooped to abandon the usual rhythm of decasyllabic verse and to 

 adopt the alexandrine instead. Whosoever the maker may have 

 been, he must have been a poet of the people, a poet fully con- 

 versant with the popular taste and inclinations. At a time when 

 the stately, serious epic celebrated its greatest triumphs, the poet 

 of Charlemagne's Pilgrimage knew how to sound a note which, 

 while stirring the people's religious sense, tickled at the same time 



