(1) Sometimes the performance was of a more personal
interest, and produced much the same sensations as are felt
on an English green on the arrival of a professional
cricketer, or round an English billiard table during a match
between Roberts and Cooke. This was when Jehan Negre, the
Lombard, came to Blois and played chess against all these
chess-players, and won much money from my lord and his
intimates; or when Baudet Harenc of Chalons made ballades
before all these ballade-makers. (2)
(1) ChampoIlion-Figeac, 381, 361, 381.
(2) Champollion-Figeac, 359,361.
It will not surprise the reader to learn they were all makers
of ballades and rondels. To write verses for May day, seems
to have been as much a matter of course, as to ride out with
the cavalcade that went to gather hawthorn. The choice of
Valentines was a standing challenge, and the courtiers pelted
each other with humorous and sentimental verses as in a
literary carnival. If an indecorous adventure befell our
friend Maistre Estienne le Gout, my lord the duke would turn
it into the funniest of rondels, all the rhymes being the
names of the cases of nouns or the moods of verbs; and
Maistre Estienne would make reply in similar fashion, seeking
to prune the story of its more humiliating episodes. If
Fredet was too long away from Court, a rondel went to upbraid
him; and it was in a rondel that Fredet would excuse himself.
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