When he stole a kiss from her as she slept, she insisted upon Peire’s departure, though her husband seems to have regarded the matter as a jest and the troubadour took refuge in Genoa.  Eventually, Azalais pardoned him and he was able to return to Marseilles.  Peire is said to have followed Richard Coeur de Lion on his crusade; it was in 1190 that Richard embarked at Marseilles for the Holy Land, and as a patron of troubadours, he was no doubt personally acquainted with Peire.  The troubadour, however, is said to have gone no farther than Cyprus.  There he married a Greek woman and was somehow persuaded that his wife was a daughter of the Emperor of Constantinople, and that he, therefore, had a claim to the throne of Greece.  He assumed royal state, added a throne to his personal possessions and began to raise a fleet for the conquest of his kingdom.  How long this farce continued is unknown.  Barral died in 1192 and Peire transferred his affections to a lady of Carcassonne, Loba de Pennautier. [73] The biography relates that her name Loba (wolf) induced the troubadour to approach her in a wolf’s skin, which disguise was so successful that he was attacked by a pack of dogs and seriously mauled.  Probably the story that an outraged husband had the troubadour’s tongue cut out at an earlier period of his life contains an equal substratum of truth.  The last period of his career was spent in Hungary and Lombardy.  His political sirventes show an insight into the affairs of his age, which is in strong contrast to the whimsicality which seems to have misguided his own life.

Guillem de Cabestanh (between 1181 and 1196) deserves mention for the story which the Provencal biography has attached to his name, a Provencal variation of the thirteenth century romance of the Chatelaine de Coucy.[25] He belonged to the Roussillon district, on the borders of Catalonia and fell in love with the wife of his overlord, Raimon of Roussillon.  Margarida or Seremonda, as she is respectively named in the two versions of the story, was attracted by Guillem’s songs, with the result that Raimon’s jealousy was aroused and meeting the troubadour one day, when he was out hunting, he killed him.  The Provencal version proceeds as follows:  he then took out the heart and sent it by a squire to the castle.  He caused it to be roasted with pepper and gave it to his [74] wife to eat.  And when she had eaten it, her lord told her what it was and she lost the power of sight and hearing.  And when she came to herself, she said, “my lord, you have given me such good meat that never will I eat such meat again.”  He made at her to strike her but she threw herself from the window and was killed.  Thereupon the barons of Catalonia and Aragon, led by King Alfonso, are said to have made a combined attack upon Raimon and to have ravaged his lands, in indignation at his barbarity.