Know that I have both read carefully and when read, accepted gratefully the letters which your affection, with memorable feeling, led you to send to me ...because in them I thought I saw evidence of your progress in learning....  Just as the Queen of Sheba is said to have come with a large retinue, that by the sight of her own eyes she might have surer knowledge of those things whose fame she had eagerly absorbed from afar, so you too, drawn by love of knowledge, came to Paris and found a much desired model of Jerusalem, sought for by many.  For here David strikes his harp of ten chords, here with mystic touch he composes the psalms.  Here Isaiah is read and in the reading his prophecies are revealed; here the rest of the prophets present their diverse strains of harmonious melody.  Here the wisdom of Solomon is open for the instruction of those who have gathered from all parts of the world; here his treasure house is thrown open to eager students.  Here to stimulate so great a concourse of students there is so great a throng of clerks that it vies with the numerous multitude of the laity.  Happy city! in which the Sacred Codes are pored over with so much zeal and their involved mysteries are solved by the gift of the outpoured Spirit, in which there is so much diligence on the part of the readers, and, in short, so much knowledge of Scriptures that it truly deserves to be called Cariath Sepher, that is The City of Letters.  Therein would I have you instructed like Gothoniel, not so much in letters as in the spirit, and so to grasp the Scriptures that you may take delight in searching out their inner sweetness....  Farewell.[80]

(3) DESCRIPTION OF PARIS ABOUT 1175 BY GUY DE BASOCHES

     To a youth who is noble and so like himself as to be a second
     self, Guy de Basoches [seeks] to match his nobility of birth by
     high-bred manners....

My situation then is this:  I am indeed in Paris, happy because of soundness of both mind and body, happier were you enjoying it too, and happiest had it but been my lot to have you with me.  I am indeed in Paris, in that City of Kings, which not only holds, by the sweet delight of her natural dowry, those who are with her, but also alluringly invites those who are far away.  For as the moon by the majesty of its more brilliant mirror overwhelms the rays of the stars, not otherwise does said city raise its imperial head with its diadem of royal dignity above the rest of the cities.  It is situated in the lap of a delightful valley, surrounded by a coronet of mountains which Ceres and Bacchus adorn with fervent zeal.  The Seine, no humble stream amid the army of rivers, superb in its channel, throwing its two arms about the head, the heart, the very marrow of the city, forms an island.  Two suburbs reach out to right and left, the less excellent, even, of which begets envy in envious cities.  From the two suburbs two stone bridges stretch over to the island and one of them which has