“Aimi!” is an exclamation of alarm, real or affected:  “Dear me, sir! take your horse away! he almost hurt me!  Robin’s horse never rears when I go behind his plough!” Still the knight persists, and though Marion still tells him to go away, she asks his name, which he says is Aubert, and so gives her the catchword for another song:—­“Vos perdes vo paine, sire Aubert!”—­which ends the scene with a duo.  The second scene begins with a duo of Marion and Robin, followed by her giving a softened account of the chevalier’s behaviour, and then they lunch on bread and cheese and apples, and more songs follow, till she sends him to get Baldwin and Walter and Peronette and the pipers, for a dance.  In his absence the chevalier returns and becomes very pressing in his attentions, which gives her occasion to sing:-

  J’oi Robin flagoler
   Au flagol d’argent.

When Robin enters, the knight picks a quarrel with him for not handling properly the falcon which he has caught in the hedge; and Robin gets a severe beating.  The scene ends by the horseman carrying off Marion by force; but he soon gets tired of carrying her against her will, and drops her, and disappears once for all.

  Certes voirement sui je beste
   Quant a ceste beste m’areste. 
   Adieu, bergiere!

Bete the knight certainly was, and was meant to be, in order to give the necessary colour to Marion’s charms.  Chevaliers were seldom intellectually brilliant in the mediaeval romans, and even the “Chansons de Geste” liked better to talk of their prowess than of their wit; but Adam de la Halle, who felt no great love for chevaliers, was not satisfied with ridiculing them in order to exalt Marion; his second act was devoted to exalting Marion at the expense of her own boors.

The first act was given up to song; the second, to games and dances.  The games prove not to be wholly a success; Marion is bored by them, and wants to dance.  The dialogue shows Marion trying constantly to control her clowns and make them decent, as Blanche of Castile had been all her life trying to control her princes, and Mary of Chartres her kings.  Robin is a rustic counterpart to Thibaut.  He is tamed by his love of Marion, but he has just enough intelligence to think well of himself, and to get himself into trouble without knowing how to get out of it.  Marion loves him much as she would her child; she makes only a little fun of him; defends him from the others; laughs at his jealousy; scolds him on occasion; flatters his dancing; sends him on errands, to bring the pipers or drive away the wolf; and what is most to our purpose, uses him to make the other peasants decent.  Walter and Baldwin and Hugh are coarse, and their idea of wit is to shock the women or make Robin jealous.  Love makes gentlemen even of boors, whether noble or villain, is the constant moral of mediaeval story, and love turns Robin into a champion of decency.  When, at last, Walter, playing the jongleur, begins to repeat a particularly coarse fabliau, or story in verse, Robin stops him short—­