Show the prototype of dou quixote A fool story by lio lur furru ru with chivalry which attained il prime in the time of the crusades were likewise developed the love cult and the ter vico many knight were at the bame time champions of war and minstrel of love such were the troubadours dours of the provence and the german dinnos tally forth through tho lands the word on one side and the tuneful lyre on the other woman who had hitherto been in a very even abject tion receiving no more legal consideration than as a handmaiden of the man was now exalted to the dignity of mittiea mit trea even unlimited ruler and a nearly idolatrous worship of the female sex was it was the order of the day for the knight married or not to elect lucli a to render implicit obedience to her to execute faithfully all her desires nd demanda however whimsical and nonsensical and finally to undergo any and every probation and trial which the proud mistress might require from her vassal and berf through this exaltation of the social position of tho women their brown n uncontrollable degree we eaid women meaning in fact wives for it was only such that the love worshipping kniatt chose for their before their marriage abe girls were kept under strict surveillance and under ereie discipline and were often entrusted to the care and o elusion of the convents thus all the cult of lore all the erotic worship waa devoted to married wives HI the connubial bonds were barly v cak in those days cf strong anith many of the domn thus wor were sport their faithful fe ladois others imposed upon them the most cruelly designed trials tests and probations although it is highly probable that most of the medieval dames finally yielded to the incessant wooing and pleading of their mail clad devotees numerous instances are known of the cruelty of the domn in exacting a severe love test fluid the folly of the man in undergoing the trying ordeal A fair dame of the provence in the sunny south of prince demanded other knight be should aass a whole year in a cave in th dennec ven barefoot all naked except a scanty covering of seln and eat nothing but raw roots fruits of the areste and herbs when the year of probation was over and the hero af this feminine caprice who had sunk into a frightful degree of physical degeneration came to ask for the reward of his love she insi yet an another test chis however seems to have knocked the bottom out ot the tub of his infatuation or he made bis reverent obeisance ind left another whose name and adventures authenticated history haa preserved by the name of a troubadour had himself sewed into a on a command of ins mistress and ran howling and growling around on all fours until the shepherd dogs at tacked him and almost lacerated and devoured hildt there were period in the worlds history when certain follies became fashionable until they finally passed into kind of epidemic mania such were chivalry with its comans womans service then afterwards alchemy mesmerism and in the recent days table rapping aid spirit im these anre periodical psychical affections which attack mankind from time to time such a one wasi also he especially its mal excrescences as bichael Xi chael the immortal spanish novelist has represented it to immortality in bis knight of the ajnoha for the laughter of all aes to come yet when he wrote his work the ins titu lion ot knight errantry had almost wholly disappeared and was alive only in romance romances s and remembrance this was in the irth century under the spanish jwo centime earlier however in the time of the dynasty Ba benberg there lived an austrian kenighi who being a himself has left to lushis adventures in rhymes fm knight errant cornea up 10 pop quixote in all that rewards folly anu he might ia fact have been the actual prototype of he spanish knight of the bad it is not to be supposed that certice Tite knew the work of the german knight for he was not conversant with the flerman language although living and erring under a habsburg but with the lively intercourse the tween the germans and the bards ader charles the V aft aad h for whom they abe together their in mapy a battle and encounter and with the interested eal with which works of the one language were translated into the other it is no altogether im possible poe sible that some spaniard ird adlar an lar with the erman language lad l ad he poem ahn germani Ger mari PI hicl dpn kniatt whose castle stood on the banks of the mure he wrote the history of his own life and adventure in verses and thus hla gigantic folly thi epi poem has the atle of thomaas tWo maas service F an ulm and has been edited by lachmann with annotations by karaban Ka rafan from the practical or hi arary standpoint th production ha very little merit but for the an psychologist it h of ibcal culpable value t crovea at what fie gree the loo enoa of the manners of hr ge had arrived and bow far it wa possible to carry supreme folly |