beyond bounds occasionally is more than probable, for human nature cannot be controlled by such a spider-web system. It will break through. Every one knows the story of William de Cabestaing, who loved and served among others—for he was to one thing constant never—Sermonde, wife of Raymond de Roussillon, whereupon the husband had him murdered, and his heart roasted and dished up at table. When Sermonde was told what she had eaten, she threw herself out of a window. But is the story true? Much the same tale occurs thrice in Boccaccio; once of Sermonde, something of the same in the Cup, and again in the Pot of Basil; moreover, the same tale is told of others.
This artificial theory of love was carried to the Court of Naples, and to that of Frederick II. at Palermo. It brought after it an inevitable reaction, and this found its fullest expression in Boccaccio.
"All the mediaeval enthusiasms," says Mr. Addington Symonds, "are reviewed and criticised from the standpoint of the Florentine bottega and piazza. It is as though the bourgeois, not content with having made nobility a crime,
were bent upon extinguishing its spirit. The tale of Agilult vulgarises the chivalrous conception of love ennobling men of low estate, by showing how a groom, whose heart is set upon a queen, avails himself of opportunity. Tancred burlesques the knightly reverence for a stainless scutcheon, by the extravagance of his revenge. The sanctity of the Thebaid, that ascetic dream of purity and self-renunciation for God's service, is made ridiculous by Ailbech. Sen Ciappelletto brings contempt upon the canonisation of saints. The confessional, the worship of relics, the priesthood, and the monastic orders, are derided with the deadliest persiflage. Christ Himself is scoffed at in a jest which points the most
