He is said to have joined Richard Cœur de Lion in his Crusade, to have visited Spain and Italy, notably the Court of Montferrat, and everywhere to have pursued his troubadour's calling and the will-of-the-wisp of a satisfying love.
He once tried boldness with Azalais and ventured on stealing a kiss one morning while she was sleeping. But he lived to rue the day. She fell into a passion of anger and refused to accept any apology. However, he murmured ancient saws about women and hoped on. Count Barral laughed at his wife for taking the wild poet's doings so seriously. She was not to be appeased, and finally Vidal went off to Cyprus and characteristically married a Princess who claimed the title of Empress of the Eastern Empire. And the two set up an Imperial Court and ordered an expensive throne, and thoroughly enjoyed themselves until Vidal had spent all his money. Presumably the Princess died, or they parted, and then Barral insisted on Vidal's returning to Provence; and he met him joyously at Les Baux, and brought him home to Marseilles where Azalais welcomed him with a freely given kiss as a token of forgiveness. And poor Vidal breaks out into a veritable spring-song of joy and thankfulness. But the Countess tired of him very soon, and never had the least idea of returning his passion.
So he starts again on his wanderings, and goes all over the world with one patron and friend after another, and so ends his strange, brilliant, joyous, troubled, unsatisfied life.
With all his natural susceptibility and need of affection he seems never to have overcome his love for the beautiful Azalais, nor, with all his charm, does he appear to have been able to inspire a serious attachment in any of the innumerable ladies to whom he warbled his graceful canzos. He never seems to have thoroughly grown up, and probably no woman capable of passionate attachment could have bestowed the full flood of it on a nature so immature.
What exactly the quality or qualities may be that bestow the power of inspiring a _grande passion_ is one of the unfathomed mysteries of the heart. Vidal possessed every attribute that could charm--or so one would suppose--yet ladies only laughed at him affectionately, petted him, and gave their hearts elsewhere.