“Was it not the other day
   That a pilgrim came this way? 
   And a passion him possessed,
   That upon his bed he lay,
   Lay, and tossed, and knew no rest,
   In his pain discomforted. 
   But thou camest by his bed,
   Holding high thine amice fine
   And thy kirtle of ermine. 
   Then the beauty that is thine
   Did he look on; and it fell
   That the Pilgrim straight was well,
   Straight was hale and comforted. 
   And he rose up from his bed,
   And went back to his own place
   Sound and strong, and fair of face.”

Thus Aucassin makes a Legend of his lady, as it were, assigning to her beauty such miracles as faith attributes to the excellence of the saints.

Meanwhile, Nicolette had slipped from the window of her prison chamber, and let herself down into the garden, where she heard the song of the nightingales.  “Then caught she up her kirtle in both hands, behind and before, and flitted over the dew that lay deep on the grass, and fled out of the garden, and the daisy flowers bending below her tread seemed dark against her feet, so white was the maiden.”  Can’t you see her stealing with those “feet of ivory,” like Bombyca’s, down the dark side of the silent moonlit streets of Beaucaire?

Then she came where Aucassin was lamenting in his cell, and she whispered to him how she was fleeing for her life.  And he answered that without her he must die; and then this foolish pair, in the very mouth of peril, must needs begin a war of words as to which loved the other best!

“Nay, fair sweet friend,” saith Aucassin, “it may not be that thou lovest me more than I love thee.  Woman may not love man as man loves woman, for a woman’s love lies no deeper than in the glance of her eye, and the blossom of her breast, and her foot’s tip-toe; but man’s love is in his heart planted, whence never can it issue forth and pass away.”

So while they speak

   “In debate as birds are,
   Hawk on bough,”

comes the kind sentinel to warn them of a danger.  And Nicolette flees, and leaps into the fosse, and thence escapes into a great forest and lonely.  In the morning she met shepherds merry over their meat, and bade them tell Aucassin to hunt in that forest, where he should find a deer whereof one glance would cure him of his malady.  The shepherds are happy, laughing people, who half mock Nicolette, and quite mock Aucassin, when he comes that way.  But at first they took Nicolette for a fee, such a beauty shone so brightly from her, and lit up all the forest.  Aucassin they banter; and indeed the free talk of the peasants to their lord’s son in that feudal age sounds curiously, and may well make us reconsider our notions of early feudalism.