CHIVALRY AND PLATONIC LOVE 63 



commouly formed for the purpose of furthering the 

 husband's political ambition or adding to his wealth 

 and influence. To those remote days, in fact, may 

 be traced the sentiment so frequently to be met with 

 in French literature that " Le mariage est le tombeau 

 de I'amour." 



How the Cours d'Amour enforced their decrees we 

 are not told, but they probably exerted some influence 

 upon public opinion. That the pretty maxims of the 

 cult were carried out to the letter in all cases we can 

 hardly suppose. Passion was understood to be wholly 

 eliminated from the engagements entered into on 

 one side and the other, so much so that wives made 

 no concealment to their husbands of the fact of their 

 having a cavalier.^ "II ne sait d'amour vraiment 

 rien," says a troubadour, "celui qui desire la possession 

 tout enti^re de sa dame." The wives were equally 

 complaisant towards their husbands, who acted as the 

 cavaliers of other ladies. 



Flourishing as they did for a hundred years, 

 chivalry and troubadourism were something more 



1 "Seigneur" (says the beautiful Oriunde to her husband in one 

 of the romances of the period), "melez-vous de votre guerre et laissez- 

 moi faire I'amour. Vous n'y avez nul deshonneur, puisque j'aime 

 un si noble baron et si expert aux armes, que Roland, et que je 

 I'aime de chaste amour."— Fauriel's Poesie Proven^ale. 



