'
Dante having asked for the name on earth of this gifted soul, the
troubadour replied in the tongue that he had learned from his mother's lips
at Riberac:
'Jeu sui Arnaulz che plor e vai cantan.'
Arnaud's modern critics admire him less than did Dante and Petrarch; but he
had a gift of sweet song, and he owed it doubtless in no small measure
to the influence of the lovely Dronne, on whose banks he must have often
rambled in childhood--that season when impressions are unconsciously laid
up which shape the future life of the intellect. No Englishman should pass
through Arnaud's birthplace with indifference, for he was the first to put
into literary form the story of Lancelot of the Lake.
Although Arnaud Daniel's castle has quite disappeared, much of the church,
that was almost a new one in his time, still remains. It was originally
Byzantine-Romanesque, but in the sixteenth century it underwent fantastic
restoration, and was badly married to another style without a name. What
struck me most on entering was the religious darkness through which one
sees the suspended lamp of the sanctuary gleaming like a star, and behind
it the dim outline of the altar.
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