The passages hitherto adduced relate to the more humble of the two classes of dwellings of the middle and lower ranks of society. The second class, which belonged to richer persons, differed from the former only in having an upper floor, commonly termed a soler (solarium, probably from sol). In the fabliau D'Estourmi (Barbazan, iv. 452), a burgher and his wife deceive three monks of a neighbouring abbey who make love to the lady: she conceals her husband in the soler above, to which he ascends by a flight of steps:—
Tesiez, vous monterez là sus
En cel solier tout coiement.
The monk, before he enters the house, passes through the court (cortil), in which there is a sheep-cot (bercil). The husband from the soler above looks through a lattice or grate and sees all that passes in the hall:—
Par la treillie le porlingne.
The stab's appear, therefore, to have been outside the hall, and there seems to have been a latticed window looking from the top of the stairs into it. The monk appears to have entered the hall by the back-door, and the chamber is in the story shewn to be adjacent to the hall (as in houses which had no soler), on the side opposite to that on which were the stairs. When another monk comes, the husband hides himself under the stairs (souz le degré). The bodies of the monks (who are killed by the husband) are carried out parmi une fausse posterne which leads into the fields (aus chans).
In the fabliau of La Saineresse (Barbazan, iii. 452), a woman who performs the office of bleeding comes to the house of a burgher, and finds the man and his wife seated on a bench in the hall:—
En mi l'aire de sa meson.
The lady says she wants bleeding, and takes her up stairs into the soler:—
Montez là sus en cel solier,
Il m'estuet de vostre mestier.
They enter and close the door. The apartment on the soler, although there was a bed in it, is not called a chamber, but a room or saloon (perrin):—
Si se descendent del perrin,
Contreval les degrez enfin
Vindrcnt errant en la maison.
