PREFACE.

been regarded as the Queen of Gardens. Here is how a person who knew them well explains it, in a small piece of verse addressed to an amiable young lady.

Madame Deshoulières Antoinette Deshoulières (1638–1694) was a prominent French poet.

Now is the time to give you counsel
On the perils to which beauty exposes you;
A girl resembles this vermilion bud,
Which in a few days one sees become a rose.
As long as it is a bud, one wishes to enjoy it,
No one sees it without a desire for theft.
As soon as the sun has made it bloom,
One no longer values its morning ruin;
Of the Rose, then, only the thorn remains.

A small, decorative ornamental printer's mark depicting a floral or leaf design.

When a Lover — the example is just the same —
Reveals desires which modesty opposes;
If one does not flee, love is a sun,
Doubt it not, by which the flower is opened.
Then in short one sees vanish
The passions and cares, by which a naive girl
Presumes of herself and allows herself to be dazzled.
Scorn succeeds the love that declines,
Of the Rose, then, only the thorn remains.

A small, decorative ornamental printer's mark similar to the previous one.

No more commerce with sleep,
Or if by chance one rests a moment,
A cruel dream gives a troublesome awakening:
A hundred and a hundred times one curses the cause:
One would wish to see buried in the earth
The tender secret, of which one imagines
That a traitor will go and gladden the world.
If one speaks low, one believes they guess it,
Of the Rose, then, only the thorn remains.

E N V O Y.

Arrant gallants, givers of deceptions original: "gabbatines",
I preach in vain that one risks listening to you:
Every girl is inclined to flirt.
Rather than making my doctrine approved,
One would spin hemp without soaking it Meaning it is an impossible task to convince them.:
But when one must quietly call for Lucina the goddess of childbirth,
Of the Rose, then, only the thorn remains.

Time when this Romance was made.

It is commonly said that Jean de Meun made this Romance in 1300, but at least there are proofs in his work itself that it was made before 1305.
It is known that the Order of the Templars was not abolished until 1309. Several of its members had been arrested as early as the year 1307, accused, it was said, of the most horrible crimes: these rumors had been spread, true or false, at least