WOULD you like to read a love-letter of the time of
Richard Cœur-de-Lion,--a love-letter written be-
fore there were looking-glasses, ¹ --a troubadour's love-
letter?

Béziers was Arnaut's home, but he could not remain
there all the time. Every troubadour was a rover, and
roving was a part of the profession as we have seen.
Arnaut seems to have gone as far as Monferrat. Our
Bonifaz was perhaps his friend, and in his castle he per-
haps met Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, and bowed low before
the Fair Knight; or possibly Guilhem III., whose por-
trait we had from the Lombard chronicle, was reigning
still at the time of his visit. And he may have been at
the Castle of the Vale when he sat down to write the
Salutz d' Amor, the Greeting of Love, that has come down
to us. ²

The letter was of course in verse, and it was written on
sheets of parchment in a single column that left wide
margins on both sides. At the head of the first sheet
there were two portraits, drawn so skilfully that, as people
who saw them declared, they seemed actually to breathe,
yet so very subtly that only those in the secret could tell
whom they represented. The figure at the left was
Arnaut kneeling and supplicating. From his lips issued

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