What the nameless author does care for, is his telling of the love-story, the passion of Aucassin and Nicolete.  His originality lies in his charming medley of sentiment and humour, of a smiling compassion and sympathy with a touch of mocking mirth.  The love of Aucassin and Nicolete—­

   “Des grans paines qu’il soufri,”

that is the one thing serious to him in the whole matter, and that is not so very serious. {2} The story-teller is no Mimnermus, Love and Youth are the best things he knew,—­“deport du viel caitif,”—­and now he has “come to forty years,” and now they are with him no longer.  But he does not lament like Mimnermus, like Alcman, like Llwyarch Hen.  “What is Life, what is delight without golden Aphrodite?  May I die!” says Mimnermus, “when I am no more conversant with these, with secret love, and gracious gifts, and the bed of desire.”  And Alcman, when his limbs waver beneath him, is only saddened by the faces and voices of girls, and would change his lot for the sea-birds. {3}

   “Maidens with voices like honey for sweetness that breathe desire,
   Would that I were a sea-bird with limbs that never could tire,
   Over the foam-flowers flying with halcyons ever on wing,
   Keeping a careless heart, a sea-blue bird of the spring.”

But our old captive, having said farewell to love, has yet a kindly smiling interest in its fever and folly.  Nothing better has he met, even now that he knows “a lad is an ass.”  He tells a love story, a story of love overmastering, without conscience or care of aught but the beloved.  And the viel caitif tells it with sympathy, and with a smile.  “Oh folly of fondness,” he seems to cry, “oh merry days of desolation”

   “When I was young as you are young,
   When lutes were touched and songs were sung,
   And love lamps in the windows hung.”

It is the very tone of Thackeray, when Thackeray is tender, and the world heard it first from this elderly, nameless minstrel, strolling with his viol and his singing boys, perhaps, like a blameless d’Assoucy, from castle to castle in “the happy poplar land.”  One seems to see him and hear him in the twilight, in the court of some chateau of Picardy, while the ladies on silken cushions sit around him listening, and their lovers, fettered with silver chains, lie at their feet.  They listen, and look, and do not think of the minstrel with his grey head and his green heart, but we think of him.  It is an old man’s work, and a weary man’s work.  You can easily tell the places where he has lingered, and been pleased as he wrote.  They are marked, like the bower Nicolete built, with flowers and broken branches wet with dew.  Such a passage is the description of Nicolete at her window, in the strangely painted chamber,

   “ki faite est par grant devisse
   panturee a miramie.”

Thence

      “she saw the roses blow,
   Heard the birds sing loud and low.”