CHAPTER XVI.

PEIRE VIDAL.

PEIRE VIDAL is one of the most versatile and manysided amongst the troubadours. His character is a psychological riddle. High gifts and wildest eccentricities are strangely mixed up in it. But the riddle cannot be read from a purely individual point of view. Peire Vidal is also a type. adventures and poems show as in a kaleidoscope the romantic and often exaggerated and whimsical ideas which animated his age and country.

His

'Peire Vidal'-the old biography begins-' was born in Toulouse, the son of a furrier; he sang better than any other poet in the world, and was one of the most foolish men who ever lived, for he believed everything to be just as it pleased him and as he would have it.' That he grew to his greatness out of the meanest circumstances was a lot which he shared with some of the most famous of his brethren, such as Marcabrun and Folquet of Marseilles, and it accounts to a certain extent for many of his follies and illusions. The time of his birth it is impossible to state accurately; it appears, however, from several remarks in his poems, that it must have

been somewhere about the middle of the twelfth century. In his youth he seems to have been very poor; thus in one of his earlier canzos he addresses a lady in the following simple and frank words: 'I have no castle with walls, and my land is not worth a pair of gloves, but there never was nor will be a more faithful lover than I am.' When his genius had made him the favourite and companion of kings and nobles, he did not lack wealth. In his songs we never find a request for assistance from his protectors, such as often occurs in the stanzas of other troubadours, and he was even in a position to keep many servants and followers. He soon tired of a quiet life, and left home to find fortune and renown. First he went to Spain, where he was kindly received at the court of Alfonso II., King of Aragon, one of the most liberal protectors of the troubadours; but his restlessness could not endure a long sojourn in the same place. He went to Italy, and for many years was travelling about between that country, Spain, and the South of France, always well received by nobles and princes, and always in love with beautiful It would be impossible to give the names of the different objects of his admiration. The general character of these futile attachments was that the poet believed himself quite irresistible, and supposed no interval to exist between his seeing and conquering. 'Often,' he says, 'I receive messages with golden rings and black and white ribbons. Hundreds of ladies would fain keep me with them if they could.' In another canzo he boasts that all

women.

husbands are afraid of him more than of fire and sword. In point of fact, however, the ladies he admired did not by any means justify these illusions, and his old biographer goes so far as to say that they all deceived him 'totas l'engannavan.' The best proof of the harmlessness of the poet's love affairs seems to be that the husbands concerned were more amused than offended by his homage to their wives. One of them, however, took the matter less easily. When Peire Vidal boasted in his usual way of having received many favours from his wife, he took his revenge by imprisoning the poet and piercing his tongue through. This anecdote of the old manuscript is confirmed by different allusions to the fact in the poems of other troubadours. The Monk of Montaudon, who mercilessly ridicules Peire Vidal's follies, says that he 'stands in need of a silver tongue.'

The first strong and genuine attachment the poet seems to have formed was for the Viscountess Azalais, of the family of Roca Martina, wife of Barral de Baux, Viscount of Marseilles. She was praised for her beauty and kindness by many of the greatest troubadours, and it was for her that Folquet of Marseilles, the amorous poet and afterwards ascetic bishop, sang his tenderest canzos. Peire Vidal in his poems always calls her Vierna, one of the nicknames by which the troubadours (in the same way as the antique poets their Lesbias and Lalages) addressed for discretion's sake the fair objects of their admiration. Peire Vidal's love in this case, unlike his former transient passions, was

of long duration. Even the severest treatment, and a long banishment from the lady's presence, could not extinguish his affection. Far from her he was unhappy, and sent her his songs as messengers of love and devotion. At first she was well pleased with the homage of the celebrated poet who spread the renown of her beauty over all the country. Moreover, Barral her husband was on very friendly terms with Peire, and sometimes even had to compose the little differences which soon arose between the eccentric troubadour and his beloved one. The poet complained bitterly of her cruelty and ingratitude towards him who had always been faithful to her, but this grief of unanswered love was favourable to his poetic genius. To this period belong his most beautiful canzos, full of touching pathos and marked by great artistic perfection. I was rich and happy,' he says in one of these songs, 'until my lady turned my joy to grief, for she behaves to me like a cruel and pitiless warrior. And she is wrong in doing so, for I never gave her occasion to complain of me, and have always been her most faithful admirer. But this very faithfulness she will never forgive me. I am like a bird which follows the hunter's pipe, although it be to its certain death. So I expose my heart willingly to the thousands of arrows which she throws at me with her beautiful eyes.' But presently he is afraid to offend her even by these modest complaints. the tornada he says, 'O lady Vierna, I will not complain of you, but I think I deserve a little more recompense for all my waiting and hoping.' Not

In

withstanding all these entreaties the lady had no. pity for her unhappy lover. The slight favours she granted him were overbalanced by outbreaks of bad temper, and worst of all she began to find something ridiculous in the rather eccentric proofs of Peire's unchanged devotion. At last an incon

siderate outbreak of his passion resulted in his being for a long time banished from her presence. One day, early in the morning, Count Barral had risen, and Azalais remained alone in her room. Of this occasion the enamoured troubadour availed himself to go there in secret. He knelt down before her couch and kissed the lips of his slumbering love. At first she believed him to be her husband, and smiled kindly, but when she fully awoke and saw it was the 'fool' Peire Vidal who had taken this liberty, she grew furious, and began to weep and to raise a great clamour. Her attendants rushed into the room, and the importunate intruder had a narrow escape of being severely punished on the spot. The lady immediately sent for her husband, and begged him to avenge Peire's impertinence; but Count Barral, in accordance with the opinion of his time, did not consider the offence an unpardonable one, and reproved the lady for having made so much of a fool's oddities. He did not, however, succeed in softening her wrath; she made the story known all over the country, and uttered such terrible threats that the poet began to fear for his safety, and preferred to wait abroad for a change in his favour. He went to Genoa, and soon afterwards, according to some manuscripts, followed King Richard on his crusade