Observe that in this case Mary exacted no service!  Usually the legends are told, as in this instance, by priests, though they were told in the same spirit by laymen, as you can see in the poems of Rutebeuf, and they would not have been told very differently by soldiers, if one may judge from Joinville; but commonly the Virgin herself prescribed the kind of service she wished.  Especially to the young knight who had, of his own accord, chosen her for his liege, she showed herself as exacting as other great ladies showed themselves toward their Lancelots and Tristans.  When she chose, she could even indulge in more or less coquetry, else she could never have appealed to the sympathies of the thirteenth-century knight-errant.  One of her miracles told how she disciplined the young men who were too much in the habit of assuming her service in order to obtain selfish objects.  A youthful chevalier, much given to tournaments and the other worldly diversions of the siecle, fell in love, after the rigorous obligation of his class, as you know from your Dulcinea del Toboso, with a lady who, as was also prescribed by the rules of courteous love, declined to listen to him.  An abbot of his acquaintance, sympathizing with his distress, suggested to him the happy idea of appealing for help to the Queen of Heaven.  He followed the advice, and for an entire year shut himself up, and prayed to Mary, in her chapel, that she would soften the heart of his beloved, and bring her to listen to his prayer.  At the end of the twelvemonth, fixed as a natural and sufficient proof of his earnestness in devotion, he felt himself entitled to indulge again in innocent worldly pleasures, and on the first morning after his release, he started out on horseback for a day’s hunting.  Probably thousands of young knights and squires were always doing more or less the same thing, and it was quite usual that, as they rode through the fields or forests, they should happen on a solitary chapel or shrine, as this knight did.  He stopped long enough to kneel in it and renew his prayer to the Queen:—­

La mere dieu qui maint chetif
 A retrait de chetivete
 Par sa grant debonnairte
 Par sa courtoise courtoisie
 Au las qui tant l’apele et prie
 Ignelement s’est demonstree,
 D’une coronne corronnee
 Plaine de pierres precieuses
 Si flamboianz si precieuses
 Pour pou li euil ne li esluisent. 
 Si netement ainsi reluisent
 Et resplendissent com la raie
 Qui en este au matin raie. 
 Tant par a bel et cler le vis
 Que buer fu mez, ce li est vis,
 Qui s’i puest assez mirer. 
 “Cele qui te fait soupirer
 Et en si grant erreur t’a mis,”
 Fait nostre dame, “biau douz amis,
 Est ele plus bele que moi?”
 Li chevaliers a tel effroi
 De la clarte, ne sai que face;
 Ses mains giete devant sa face;
 Tel hide a et tel freeur
 Chaoir se laisse de freeur;
 Mais cele en qui pitie est toute
 Li dist:  “Amis, or n’aies doute! 
 Je suis cele, n’en doute mie,
 Qui te doi faire avoir t’amie. 
 Or prens garde que tu feras. 
 Cele que tu miex ameras
 De nous ii auras a amie.”