LITTLE ..TEHAiV DE SAINTRE.* THE history of Little Jehan de
Saintre is a French romance of the fifteenth century. Written in the last century of the middle ages, it tells the story of its own epoch even better than the personal narrative with which it professes to deal ; and we may almost say of it that there is scarcely another period of the world's history when its composition would have been possible. Perhaps it owes to this marked individuality the comparative neglect into which it
• The History and Pleasant Chronicle of Little Jehan de Saintre, and of the Lady of the Fair Cousins. Now Snit done into English by Alexander Vance. Dublin : Moffat and Co.
has fallen. Nevertheless, it has some rare literary merits. The style is naif and easy as that of Montaigne ; the plot is one of sin- gular originality, and the author seems to yield as unconsciously as completely to the opposite influences of his time, so that we glide rapidly but not abruptly from a region of elevated sentiment into the lowest abysses of a corrupt society. Such a book certainly deserved translation.
Little Jehan de Saintre is the son of a gentleman of Anjou, and a page at the French Court. The Lady of the Fair Cousins, who seems, like Jehan himself, to have been a historical personage, is a young widow of the Royal blood, who has not the wish or the licence for a second marriage. The author explains that she has determined to emulate the famous widows of antiquity, but there is an undercurrent of irony while he plays with this part of his subject, and it is clear from later passages in the romance that the Court exercised some surveillance over her actions. Under these circumstances, it occurs to her " that she could not do a better thing than to make the fortune of some young gentleman or squire," and she fixes on little Jehan de Saintre, a forward lad of thirteen, as her favourite. There are several charming passages which picture the boy's confusion in their first interviews, when he cannot understand what the lady is driving at. For a page thinking of nothing but tennis and his duties in the house to be called up by a great lady before a bevy of laughing maids, asked to give the name of her whom he loves best par amour, and lectured on " the imperishable memories of a Lancelot, a Gawain, a Tristan," was an ordeal that might fairly disconcert a modern Etonian. Little Jehan first tries to keep clear of his persecutors altogether, but escape from inmates of the same palace is impos- sible ; and being brought a second time to bay, he names a little girl, some six years of age, as his mistress. lie is terribly punished for his stupidity. The lady lectures him in true mediaeval style on the seven deadly sins, and their incompatibility with true love ; and then having sworn him to secrecy, proceeds with an exposition of the Ten Commandments and the Creed. "And so," she winds up, " it cannot be otherwise but that by an obedience to the service of our Lady and of your lady par amour, you will be, in the long run, saved, not only your body, but body and soul together." Little Jehan, puzzled, terrified, and attracted by the prospect of knightly service to one of the first ladies in Court, takes a vow of secrecy and obedience, and is allowed to make his escape.
The page has, however, fallen into kind hands. Madame knows how Court favour is to be won, and keeps her young proteW sup- plied with money, which she instructs him:how to lay out to advan- tage. He is the best dressed of the royal retinue, rides good horses, and is able to make presents even to the Queen. The author skilfully extenuates the indelicacy of taking money from a lady by representing little Jehan as declining it in the first in- stance, and only yielding to his mistress's commands. But it is less easy to excuse the gross lying which madame enjoins and which the boy practises with great dexterity, that the source of his unusual riches may not be suspected. Evidently the moral fibre in both is weak ; and the lady at least endorses the Spanish proverb that a bushel of private shame is lighter than an
ounce of public dishonour. For a time, of course, the relations of the two parties are innocent, and the boy gains in every way by the connection ; is promoted at Court, pushed forward into all honourable adventures, and schooled in the chiValrous sentiment of the times. But the Devil always builds a chapel near the church, and some lower appetite is pretty sure to follow in the wake of an exalted sentiment. The half-romantic, half-motherly love of the young woman for the boy is exchanged for a warmer feeling as he ripens into the peerless knight and accomplished gentleman. Jehan de Saintre is not ungrateful to his benefactress. They dare not avow their attachment to one another, and so far it is an ordinary intrigue ; but by the morality of the time it is one that is not discreditable to either party so long as they conduct it warily and loyally, neither provoking suspicion nor failing in entire faith to one another. This position of true love lasts for fifteen months after Saintre's return from Prussia, where his reputation as a consummate soldier has been established.
The beginning of the end comes when the lover devises a new and fanciful enterprise by which he and some other knights are to challenge adventures for three years' space through the world. Probably he is already weary of Armida and the enchanted gar- den, though he does not acknowledge his unfaithfulness to himself. The lady seems to suspect him, and at first threatens that he shall never be to her again what he has been, but at last so far relents as to fasten his ensign on his shoulder. On his departure, however, she sickens and is ordered change of air by the physician. She goes to her property in the country, and as it is near Lent she pays a visit to a neighbouring abbey. The abbot, the son of a rich burgess, is " big and brawny, and whether to wrestle, jump, vault, throw, pitch the sledge, or put the stone, at tennis or what you will, there was not a monk, knight, squire, or citizen alive who, when Damp (Don) Abbot had chosen to do his best, had ever proved his match." The denouement of the story may be easily guessed. Madame forgets love, honour, and reputation, and abandons herself to a disgraceful intrigue. Her infatuation is still at its height when she one day meets Saintre, who has returned, and come from Court to visit her. In spite of the cold welcome that she gives him, he accepts an invitation from the abbot, and dines in convent with them. After dinner the gross nature of the new lover comes out ; he picks a quarrel with his guest, forces him into a wrestling bout, throws him in every encounter, and makes him the laughing-stock of the company. Saintre smothers his indignation, and invites the whole party to a return feast. Here he inveigles the abbot into trying on a suit of proof armour, and then calling on him to defend himself, attacks him with the weapons of a soldier. The Churchman, in spite of superior strength, is easily overborne and hurled headlong over a bench. The knight has just raised his arm to slay him, when he luckily remembers five texts of the Bible that forbid homicide, and contents himself with slitting his enemy's tongue and driving his dagger through either cheek. Then he takes off the lady's belt, telling her that she must not wear blue, which is the emblem of fidelity, and bids her farewell. Before long she is summoned back to Court, some suspicions having arisen as to the reasons of her long absence. But De Saintre has not closed accounts with her. He proposes one evening to entertain the Court with a marvellous history, tells them under feigned names the story of his love to madame, with its tragic-comical issue, and, when all present have passed verdict upon the unknown lady, draws out the belt and restores it on beaded knees to Madame. " And from that hour began her fall, and forfeited she for ever all her honour, joy, and peace of mind."
In this story, to take modern illustrations, the early plot is almost like that of Esmond; the issue is as coarse as ever Smollett or Balzac could have devised. The question for the critic to examine is whether these apparent incongruities can be explained by the facts of the times and of our common nature. Is the cynical view of humanity, the belief that earthly imperfection is so interwoven with our finest energies that we are almost certain to recoil earthward in proportion as we strain heavenward, one that is so generally true as to be the fit material of art ; or does a story like that of Jehan de Saintre convey another moral against those who try to create a world of their own. That the young widow's fancy for petting a pretty boy about the Court was in itself one for which she need not have blushed, though the issue proved that it was unwise, may be granted even by those who think that there is some alloy in all friendship between the sexes. That a woman shut out from the proper refuge of domesticity, concentrating all the warmth of a pent-up nature upon her boy squire, and watching him as he ripened into manhood, and took his place among the first knights of the day in great measure through her own teaching, should come to regard him with warmer feelings than before, and gradually invite him to exchange affectionate reverence for passionate love, is the issue that every indifferent critic must have predicted, and in the precautions she took from the first for secresy the lady did homage to the better sense and severer judgment of the world. Of such loves between a young man and a woman ten or twelve years his senior the event cannot long be doubtful. There is a certain sense of shame on one side and a fear of ridicule on the other ; the man is not sorry to be decently quit of an entanglement, and the woman is haunted by suspicions that exclude confidence. We owe it to the influence of the early romances, in which the knight is always better than his lady-love, that Saintre preserves his allegiance till he can no longer render it without disgrace. But what for him has been a mere episode in his life, a childish feeling that he may easily outgrow, and a connection to which he has owed the best part of his educa- tion, has been to his mistress a guilty intrigue, which has sapped the whole foundations of instinctive morality. In this sense we regard the author as a true artist when he paints the melancholy consummation. The first barriers of shame have been broken down, and a woman in whom a long intrigue has completely sullied the bloom of early sentiment declines in her lover's absence, upon the first tolerable substitute. It is the triumph of sheer sensuality in a mixed nature, but it carries with it complete moral degrada- tion. How common such intrigues with Churchmen were dur- ing the fifteenth century, and what bitter feeling they excited m lay society, might be proved abundantly from the literature of the fifteenth century. " A woman," says one speaker in the Heptameron, "should never let a priest enter her room except to administer the last sacraments." Indeed, in a gross age the idle man easily carried the day against the worker. " If you knew," says another speaker in the Heptameron, " the difference there is between a gentleman who has all his life borne harness and fol- lowed war, and a well-fed varlet who has never stirred from his home, you would easily excuse this poor widow,"—who has trifled with a gallant gentleman and given her favours to a groom. Saintre's revenge, therefore, expresses the hatred of class to class, as well as the just anger of a man who has been outraged and publicly insulted. His treatment of the abbot is indefensible from the English point of view. But by the rules of the Austrian ser- vice, an officer is expelled his regiment if he receives a blow without cutting his assailant down, though the latter be an unarmed man. The revenge taken upon Madame is in even worse taste. But Balzac's novels show abundantly that there is a section of French society which still holds that the wounds of self-love may be ministered to by public insult to a woman. " L'honnete homme trompd s'eloigne, et ne dit mot," is a difficult maxim for human nature, above all, among Kelts.
Mr. Vance has shown sound judgment in excising some unim- portant chapters, and his style generally is good and spirited, though a little loose. His opinion that Madame's love for Saintrd may always have been purely Platonic we regard as more dishonourable to her than our own, but his preface is well worth reading, as the author has a genuine though not a precise knowledge of early times. In one passage of the translation his rendering is some- thing more than slovenly. Saintre, wishing to be alone with Madame, jocularly asks the King, with whom he is in high favour, to pass the night with the Queen (" Je vous prie, que ce soir avec la Reyne dormez.") The object of course is that Madame may be discharged from attendance. Mr. Vance renders the passage, " I think you might for once stretch a point, and let me sleep with the Queen." The custom of the fifteenth century, as we could prove by several illustrations, was for husband and wife to sleep in separate rooms, the husband attended by squires or pages, the wife by waiting-women. When they slept together the husband visited his wife's room, and her attendants were sometimes though not necessarily sent away. We allude to this little point because Mr. Vance has conjured up an unusual diffi- culty, and assumed that the author of Jehan de Saintre is sometimes inventing customs that were not of his time for enhanced pictorial effect. We know no authentic instance of such inventions in literature, though an author may often sin from imperfect knowledge of a society in which he does not mix. We believe Jehan de Saintrd to be a true picture of the times preced- ing the Reformation, and we cordially recommend it to all who will be content to remember that it is not a sample of the purest spirit of chivalry.
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