Thibaut was Tristan, and is said to have painted his verses on the walls of his chateau.  If he did, he painted there, in the opinion of M. Gaston Paris, better poetry than any that was written on paper or parchment, for Thibaut was a great prince and great poet who did in both characters whatever he pleased.  In modern equivalents, one would give much to see the chateau again with the poetry on its walls.  Provins has lost the verses, but Troyes still keeps some churches and glass of Thibaut’s time which hold their own with the best.  Even of Thibaut himself, something survives, and though it were only the memories of his seneschal, the famous Sire de Joinville, history and France would be poor without him.  With Joinville in hand, you may still pass an hour in the company of these astonishing thirteenth-century men and women:—­crusaders who fight, hunt, make love, build churches, put up glass windows to the Virgin, buy missals, talk scholastic philosophy, compose poetry:  Blanche, Thibaut, Perron, Joinville, Saint Louis, Saint Thomas, Saint Dominic, Saint Francis—­you may know them as intimately as you can ever know a world that is lost; and in the case of Thibaut you may know more, for he is still alive in his poems; he even vibrates with life.  One might try a few verses, to see what he meant by courtesy.  Perhaps he wrote them for Queen Blanche, but, to whomever he sent them, the French were right in thinking that she ought to have returned his love (edition of 1742):—­

Nus hom ne puet ami reconforter
 Se cele non ou il a son cuer mis. 
 Pour ce m’estuet sovent plaindre et plourer
 Que mis confors ne me vient, ce m’est vis,
 De la ou j’ai tote ma remembrance. 
 Pour bien amer ai sovent esmaiance
   A dire voir. 
 Dame, merci! donez moi esperance
   De joie avoir.

Jene puis pas sovent a li parler
 Ne remirer les biaus iex de son vis. 
 Ce pois moi que je n’i puis aler
 Car ades est mes cuers ententis.

Ho! bele riens, douce sans conoissance,
 Car me mettez en millor attendance
   De bon espoir! 
 Dame, merci! donez moi esperance
   De joie avoir.

Aucuns si sont qui me vuelent blamer
 Quant je ne di a qui je suis amis;
 Mais ja, dame, ne saura mon penser
 Nus qui soit nes fors vous cui je le dis
 Couardement a pavours a doutance
 Dont puestes vous lors bien a ma semblance
   Mon cuer savoir. 
 Dame, merci! donez moi esperance
   De joie avoir.

There is no comfort to be found for pain
 Save only where the heart has made its home. 
 Therefore I can but murmur and complain
 Because no comfort to my pain has come
 From where I garnered all my happiness. 
 From true love have I only earned distress
   The truth to say. 
 Grace, lady! give me comfort to possess
   A hope, one day.

Seldom the music of her voice I hear
 Or wonder at the beauty of her eyes. 
 It grieves me that I may not follow there
 Where at her feet my heart attentive lies.