"No field has offered better opportunities to our modern poets than the biographies of these wandering singers.They are biographies that, in this critical age, we cannot accept as truth; but what we reluctantly yield in the domain of fact, we cling to, with greater persistence, in the domain of poetry. Real events, the treasures of folk-lore, and the play of imaginative genius, have combined to mould these stories into shapes that cannot die.The jongleur, before he chanted a song, narrated the life-history upon which it was founded. Sometimes, perhaps, he told that which he knew; more frequently, however, he relied upon tradition, or even upon his own fancy. Thus were accumulated the materials for those tales of passion which have inspired succeeding poets from Dante to Swinburne and Browning, the Biographies of the Troubadours. In them are to be found tragedy and comedy, faithfulness and deception, affection, jealousy and hate. No one who reads them, with any belief in their accuracy, can help feeling that, when their heroes occupied the stage, the chief business of life was love.We read of Rudel, who was enamoured of the Countess of Tripoli, without ever having seen her, solely upon the reports of her beauty and virtue which he heard from pilgrims returning from the Holy Land. In her honor he made all his songs, and at last, in order that he might see her, he joined the Crusaders and began his voyage across the sea. But a great sickness fell upon him, and when he reached the haven he was dying. Yet he could thank God that, before his death, he had seen his lady. Within her arms he breathed his last, and she, in her grief, entered a convent that very day.Less tragic, but hardly less romantic, is a story of Peire Vidal, who at one time believed himself Emperor of Constantinople. In love with Madame Loba—a name that signifies wolf—he attired himself in a wolf-skin, allowed himself to be pursued in the mountains by huntsmen and hounds, and was almost killed for his pains.Guilhem de Balaruc, learning from a friend that a lover, reconciled to his sweetheart after a quarrel, has a happiness equal to that caused by the first interchange of affection, departs from his lady, insults her messengers, and refuses all offers of reconcilement. When he thinks it time to renew his courtship, it is she who is obdurate, and only after long efforts and the intervention of many friends, is he pardoned. The penance imposed upon him by the lady is severe. He must draw out the nail of his little finger, and send it to her with a song in which he declares his folly and expresses his sorrow for his fault. Both conditions he, of course, joyfully fulfils.Most famous of all, perhaps, is the story of Guilhem de Cabestaing. This knight fell under the suspicions of his lord, but, by pretending that his passion was for his lady's sister, and by enlisting her services in the imposture, he for some time escaped detection. At length, however, one of his own songs betrayed his secret. He was slain, and his heart was served to his lady at her repast. When informed what it was she had eaten unaware, she said: "My lord, you have given me so good a food to eat, that I will never again taste of any other." And casting herself from a lofty balcony, she died.In such wise has romantic fiction embellished the lives of the troubadours and reflected its splendor upon their songs. Other bards have celebrated an Achilles, a Roland, or a Siegfried, but these bards are themselves heroes of poetry.Among them all, there is none, perhaps, who is, at the same time, so distinguished for his own poems and for his legendary reputation, as Bertran de Born. Living during the eventful period of the wars between Henry II of England and his rebellious sons, and himself taking a prominent part in these contests, this singer represents, in the fullest degree, the warlike element in the Provençal lyric. Love, indeed, he sang, but his chief inspiration was the trumpet of battle. He was, in turn, in friendly and in hostile relations with all three of the young princes—with Henry, known as "the Young King," with Geoffrey, and with Richard of the Lion-heart."