It is almost unnecessary to say that when the secret of producing prose and its advantages over verse for certain purposes had been discovered, it was freely employed for all such purposes, scientific as science was understood, devotional, instructive, business (the _Livre des Mestiers_, or book of the guilds of Paris, is of the thirteenth century), and miscellaneous. But few of these things concern literature proper. It is otherwise with the application of prose to fiction.
This, as we have seen, had probably taken place in the case of the Arthurian romances as early as the middle of our period, and throughout the thirteenth century prose romances of length were not unknown, though it was later that all the three classes--Carlovingian, Arthurian, and Antique--were thrown indiscriminately into prose, and lengthened even beyond the huge length of their later representatives in verse. But for this reason or that, romance in prose was with rare exceptions unfavourable to the production of the best literature. It encouraged the prolixity which was the great curse of the Middle Ages, and the deficient sense of form and scanty presence of models prevented the observance of anything like a proper scheme.
But among the numerous origins of this wonderful time the origin of the short prose tale, in which France was to hold almost if not quite the highest rank among European countries, was also included. It would not seem that the kind was as yet very frequently attempted--the fact that the verse _fabliau_ was still in the very height of its flourishing-time, made this unlikely; nor was it till that flourishing-time was over that farces on the one hand, and prose tales on the other, succeeded as fruit the _fabliau_-flower. But it is from the thirteenth century that (with some others) we have _Aucassin et Nicolette_.[159] If it was for a short time rather too much of a fashion to praise (it cannot be over-praised) this exquisite story, no wise man will allow himself to be disgusted any more than he will allow himself to be attracted by fashion. This work of "the old caitiff," as the author calls himself with a rather Hibernian coaxingness, is what has been called a _cantefable_--that is to say, it is not only obviously written, like verse romances and _fabliaux_, for recitation, but it consists partly of prose, partly of verse, the music for the latter being also given. Mr Swinburne, Mr Pater, and, most of all, Mr Lang, have made it unnecessary to tell in any detailed form the story how Aucassin, the son of Count Garin of Beaucaire, fell in love with Nicolette, a Saracen captive, who has been bought by the Viscount of the place and brought up as his daughter; how Nicolette was shut up in a tower to keep her from Aucassin; how Count Bongars of Valence assailed Beaucaire and was captured by Aucassin on the faith of a promise from his father that Nicolette shall be restored to him; how the Count broke his word, and Aucassin, setting his prisoner free, was put in prison himself; how Nicolette escaped, and by her device Aucassin also; how the lovers were united; and how, after a comic interlude in the country of "Torelore," which could be spared by all but folk-lorists, the damsel is discovered to be daughter of the King of Carthage, and all ends in bowers of bliss.