Vins clers ne raspez ne lor faut
    A copes dorees a boivre;

they sat before the fire and talked till bedtime, when the squires made up the beds in the hall, and brought in supper—­dates, figs, nutmegs, spices, pomegranates, and at last lectuaries, suspiciously like what we call jams; and “alexandrine gingerbread”; after which they drank various drinks, with or without spice or honey or pepper; and old moret, which is thought to be mulberry wine, but which generally went with clairet, a colourless grape-juice, or piment.  At least, here are the lines, and one may translate them to suit one’s self:—­

Et li vaslet aparellierent
 Les lis et le fruit au colchier
 Que il en i ot de moult chier,
 Dates, figues, et nois mugates,
 Girofles et pomes de grenates,
 Et leituaires an la fin,
 Et gingenbret alixandrin. 
 Apres ce burent de maint boivre,
 Piment ou n’ot ne miel ne poivre
 Et viez more et cler sirop.

The twelfth century had the child’s love of sweets and spices and preserved fruits, and drinks sweetened or spiced, whether they were taken for supper or for poetry; the true knight’s palate was fresh and his appetite excellent either for sweets or verses or love; the world was young then; Robin Hoods lived in every forest, and Richard Coeur-de-Lion was not yet twenty years old.  The pleasant adventures of Robin Hood were real, as you can read in the stories of a dozen outlaws, and men troubled themselves about pain and death much as healthy bears did, in the mountains.  Life had miseries enough, but few shadows deeper than those of the imaginative lover, or the terrors of ghosts at night.  Men’s imaginations ran riot, but did not keep them awake; at least, neither the preserved fruits nor the mulberry wine nor the clear syrup nor the gingerbread nor the Holy Graal kept Perceval awake, but he slept the sound and healthy sleep of youth, and when he woke the next morning, he felt only a mild surprise to find that his host and household had disappeared, leaving him to ride away without farewell, breakfast, or Graal.

Christian wrote about Perceval in 1174 in the same spirit in which the workmen in glass, thirty years later, told the story of Charlemagne.  One artist worked for Mary of Champagne; the others for Mary of Chartres, commonly know as the Virgin; but all did their work in good faith, with the first, fresh, easy instinct of colour, light, and line.  Neither of the two Maries was mystical, in a modern sense; none of the artists was oppressed by the burden of doubt; their scepticism was as childlike as faith.  If one has to make an exception, perhaps the passion of love was more serious than that of religion, and gave to religion the deepest emotion, and the most complicated one, which society knew.  Love was certainly a passion; and even more certainly it was, as seen in poets like Dante and Petrarch,—­in romans like “Lancelot” and “Aucassin,”—­in ideals like the Virgin,—­complicated beyond