MARIE DE FRANCE 



The whole of this incident of the weasel and the 

 flower, read in the original, is of extraordinary 

 interest and beauty. What a touching picture 

 of animal sensibility is the account of the despair 

 of the weasel on finding its dead mate, and its 

 tender display of solicitude and sympathy, raising 

 the lifeless head and trying to reanimate the 

 small inert body ! Only one who loved animals 

 and knew their habits well could have told thus 

 tenderly and graphically a story so simple, yet 

 so suggestive, of the love of two sentient things, 

 a love which runs like a thread of gold through 

 all creation and makes it one. 



The twelfth century was an age of humanism 

 as well as feudalism. As often happens in times 

 of comparative peace, a growth of interest in 

 the individual was springing up and finding 

 expression in lyric poetry and stories. The day 

 of epics was waning. Those vast and involved 

 poems, like to huge and complex frescoes, found 

 little favour at a time when men and women, or 

 at least women, had more leisure and inclination 

 to try to get below the surface of things. Heroes 

 had been glorified till they had almost become 

 deified, and something more personal, more 

 individual, was wanted, f By the side of modern 

 romance, where the most sacred and secret intri- 

 cacies of human nature are, as it were, displayed 

 under the microscope, Marie's narrations may 

 seem somewhat artless. But in putting into 

 words the dawning desires of her time she 

 gave form and impetus to feeling and thought 



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