But it is true, if an exaggeration of the truth ; and its
constant hugging of the facts of life supplies the
strangest possible contrast to the graceful but shadowy
land of romance which we have left in former chapters.
We all know the burial-scene of Launcelot — later, no
doubt, in its finest form, but in suggestion and spirit
of the time with which we are dealing. Let us now
consider briefly the burial-scene of Eenart.
When M^on, the excellent first editor of the collec-
tion, put, as was reason, the branch entitled " La Mort
The burial of Eenart" last, he was a little troubled by
Benart. ^j^g Consideration that several of the beasts
whom in former branches Eenart himself has brought
to evil ends reappear and take part in his funeral.
But this scarcely argued a sufficient appreciation of
the true spirit of the cycle. The beasts, though per-



296 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300.
fectly lively abstractions, are, after all, abstractions in
a way, and you cannot kill an abstraction. Nay, the
author, with a really grand final touch of the pervad-
ing satire which is the key of the whole, gives us to
understand at the last that Eenart (though he has
died not once, but twice, in the course of the fytt^ is
not really dead at all, and that when Dame Hermeline
persuades the complaisant ambassadors to report to
the Lion -King that they have seen the tomb with
Eenart inscribed upon it, the fact was indeed true
but the meaning false, inasmuch as it was another
Eenart altogether. Indeed the true Eenart is clearly
immortal.
