CHAPTER IV.

MARTIAL DE PARIS.

TIME has dealt more kindly with Martial de Paris than with many others of his brethren. The author of Les Vigilles de

Charles VII. and of the Arrêts d'amour had, it is true, the advantage of the printing-press at a time when people were too much devoted to publishing their own works and the classics to think of the productions of their fathers. Accordingly, while Christine de Pisan is not yet published at all, while Villon had little chance of popularity till after his death, while Charles of Orleans lay in manuscript for three hundred years, and Olivier Basselin made his début, considerably altered, more than a hundred years after he was 'brought to great shame' by the English; Martial printed himself in no less than four editions, if not five, before his death. In some respects he deserves to be remembered above all his contemporaries, and, as my extracts will shew, in clearness and energy of conception, as well as in grace of diction, he may be ranked beside any writer of his own or the following age.

Of his life we know just this, and no more.

His family

came from Auvergne, he himself being a native of Paris, hence he is sometimes called Martial de Paris, sometimes Martial d'Auvergne. He was born in 1440, and died in 1508. He was procureur in the court of the Parliament, and notary at the Chatelet of Paris. The Chronique Scandaleuse gives the following account of an incident in his life. "In the said year, in the month of June, when beans blossom and ripen, it happened that several men and women lost their understanding, and even at Paris there was among others a young man named Martial d'Auvergne, procureur in the court of Parliament, and notary in the Chatelet of Paris, who, after being married for three weeks to one of the daughters of M. Jacques Fournier, counsellor to the King in the said court of Parliament, lost his senses in such a manner that on the day of Monsieur St. John the Baptist, about nine o'clock in the morning, such a frenzy seized him that he threw himself out of the window of his chamber into the street, and broke his thigh and bruised his whole body, and was in great danger of dying. And afterwards remained a long time in the said frenzy, and then came to himself and was in his right mind."

He died in 1508, if his epitaph is to be trusted:

"Sous Jésus Christ, en bon sens pacifique,

Patiemment rendit son esprit

En mai treize, ce jour là sans replique,

Qu'on disoit lors mil cinq cent huit."

The Arrêts d'amour are in prose, with an introduction and conclusion in verse. Some of them are very curious specimens of a kind of literature now quite forgotten. They are written in legal phraseology, and with an appearance of

great gravity. They illustrate a whole literature in prose and verse, of which they are the last examples; and they have the advantage over the 'Droitz nouveaux' of Coquillart, in being free from the trammels of rhyme and metre, and thereby better able to preserve the forensic gravity and formality which constitute their charm.

After describing the court and the robes of the officials in a short introductory poem, we go on directly to the Arrêts. Of these there are a great many. Let us select

one or two.

"Before the Bailiff de Joye is heard a suit between a young lover, plaintiff on the one hand, and his mistress, defendant on the other. The said lover, the plaintiff, said that after he had taken leave of his mistress to go away, she recalled him in order to speak to him; that on returning she made pretence to whisper, and kissed him with such force that she nearly made his nose bleed; that she also, in doing this, struck him hard with the corner of her cap, wherein was a pin; that by this act the pin scratched his cheek, which became inflamed, so that the said plaintiff does not expect to get well for three months. In consequence of this he does not dare to shew himself before people, and is still very ill. And because he knows that the defendant did it not from hatred and malice, but by accident, he does not ask for damages, but only demands that she should be sentenced to cure him, and to tend him until he be recovered.

"On the part of the defendant it was urged that the plaintiff had been the assailant, in order to get the said kiss; that with regard to the scratch, it was an accident;

that there was nothing to cry about, because the said plaintiff had not left off eating and drinking, and yet complained of his head.

"Upon which, both parties heard, the said Bailiff de Joye by his sentence, and with regard to certain reports of the Physician of Love, who had examined the wound and reported it in a dangerous place, condemned the lady to furnish the plaintiff with fit and proper cloths with which to make good poultices. The defendant, not satisfied with this sentence, appeals to the higher court. Finally, all seen and considered, the Court of Love decides in favour of the first sentence, and nonsuits the appellant. Further, since it has appeared that since the first sentence the defendant has openly boasted that if she is obliged to apply the poultices she will bite the cheek of plaintiff, and that so hard that he will remember it for ever afterwards, the court ruled and decided that she should be condemned to thirty livres fine, to be paid to the prisoners of Love, and to be expended on their behalf in banquets and green turf, and in the costs of the appeal. And further ordered that she should be constrained to obey the decision of the court, on penalty of caption of the body."

Another :

"Before the Recorder of Love in the province of Beauty is tried a suit between a lover, plaintiff on the one hand, in matter of rescision of a contract, and his 'noble dame et amye' defendant, on the other. And said plaintiff states that from the time that they were first acquainted, they made several promises and alliances of Love. And among other things was this compact between them: that every

night on going to bed, before putting on his night-cap, he should tie two knots in the end of it, and should say, 'God give my lady good night.' And also that she on dressing

in the morning should say, 'God give my très doulx amy good day.' And, moreover, that it was agreed that the lover should every week go after dark and wait a good hour in order to obtain a bouquet or a violet, which she was to throw out to him as recompense, or to say, 'à Dieu, God give you good night.' Now the plaintiff pleaded that in making the above contract he had been enormously deceived. For first of all, with regard to the knots in his night-cap he was obliged every third day or so to buy a new one, such was the havoc and destruction caused by this nightly tying. And besides, the knots made it of no use for its proper purpose, and that several times he had been obliged to take it off all together, which was 'grand' peine' with the illness that he had. And on the other point there was deception, 'outre moitié de juste pris' (deceptio ultra dimidiam partem justi precii). For only to get a paltry bouquet or a violet, the gallant was compelled to go and pass once or twice a week before the door of his lady, when he suffered infinite pains. For first of all it generally happened that he did not find her at the door, nor any one else to speak to, and had to walk up and down without fire or light. Secondly, when he wanted to go away, it sometimes happened that he saw the light of her candle through the windows, a sight which so much ravished him that he did not know what would become of him. And because he thought then that she was not gone to bed, and that she would soon come, he would wait there