but the ideas may have come from anywhere, like the game of chess which the pilgrims or crusaders brought home from Syria.  In the Oriental game, the King was followed step by step by a Minister whose functions were personal.  The crusaders freed the piece from control; gave it liberty to move up or down or diagonally, forwards and backwards; made it the most arbitrary and formidable champion on the board, while the King and the Knight were the most restricted in movement; and this piece they named Queen, and called the Virgin:—­

    Li Baudrains traist sa fierge por son paon sauver,
     E cele son aufin qui cuida conquester
     La firge ou le paon, ou faire reculer.

The aufin or dauphin became the Fou of the French game, and the bishop of the English.  Baldwin played his Virgin to save his pawn; his opponent played the bishop to threaten either the Virgin or the pawn.

For a hundred and fifty years, the Virgin and Queens ruled French taste and thought so successfully that the French man has never yet quite decided whether to be more proud or ashamed of it.  Life has ever since seemed a little flat to him, and art a little cheap.  He saw that the woman, in elevating herself, had made him appear ridiculous, and he tried to retaliate with a wit not always sparkling, and too often at his own expense.  Sometimes in museums or collections of bric-a-brac, you will see, in an illuminated manuscript, or carved on stone, or cast in bronze, the figure of a man on his hands and knees, bestridden by another figure holding a bridle and a whip; it is Aristotle, symbol of masculine wisdom, bridled and driven by woman.  Six hundred years afterwards, Tennyson revived the same motive in Merlin, enslaved not for a time but forever.  In both cases the satire justly punished the man.  Another version of the same story—­perhaps the original—­was the Mystery of Adam, one of the earliest Church plays.  Gaston Paris says “it was written in England in the twelfth century, and its author had real poetic talent; the scene of the seduction of Eve by the serpent is one of the best pieces of Christian dramaturgy ...  This remarkable work seems to have been played no longer inside the church, but under the porch":—­

Diabolus.  Jo vi Adam mais trop est fols.

Eva.  Un poi est durs.

Diabolus.  Il serra mols. 
 Il est plus durs qui n’est enfers.

Eva.  Il est mult francs.

Diabolus.  Ainz est mult sers. 
 Cure ne volt prendre de sei
 Car la prenge sevals de tei. 
 Tu es fieblette et tendre chose
 E es plus fresche que n’est rose. 
 Tu es plus blanche que crystal
 Que neif que chiet sor glace en val. 
 Mal cuple en fist li Criatur. 
 Tu es trop tendre e il trop dur. 
 Mais neporquant tu es plus sage
 En grant sens as mis tun corrage
 For co fait bon traire a tei. 
 Parler te voil.

Eva.  Ore ja fai.

Devil.  Adam I’ve seen, but he’s too rough.