_Les napes metent pardeanz un jardin._ --Mort de Garin, p. 28.
And, in the “Roman de Berte” (p. 4), Charles Martel is represented as dining similarly in the garden, at the midsummer season, when the rose was in blossom--
_Entour le saint Jehan, que la rose est fleurie._
[Illustration: _No. 194. A. Mediæval Garden Scene._]
There is an early Latin story of a man who had a cross-grained wife. One day he invited some friends to dinner, and set out his table in his garden, by the side of a river (_fecit poni mensam in hortu suo prope aquam_). The lady seated herself by the water-side, at a little distance from the table, and cast a very forbidding look upon her husband’s guests; upon which he said to her, “Show a pleasant countenance to our guests, and come nearer the table;” but she only moved further off, and nearer the brink of the river, with her back turned to the water. He repeated his invitation in a more angry tone, in reply to which, to show her ill-humour, she drew further back, with a quick movement of ill-temper, through which, forgetting the nearness of the river, she fell into it, and was drowned. The husband, pretending great grief, sent for a boat, and proceeded up the stream in search of her body. This excited some surprise among his neighbours, who suggested to him that he should go down the stream, and not up. “Ah!” said he, “you did not know my wife--she did everything in contradiction, and I firmly believe that her body has floated against the current, and not with it.”
Even among the aristocratic class the garden was often the place for giving audience and receiving friends. In the romance of “Garin le Loherain,” a messenger sent to the count Fromont, one of the great barons, finds him sitting in a garden surrounded by his friends--
_Trouva Fromont seant en un jardin;_ _Environ lui avoit de ses amins._ --Roman de Garin, i. 282.
A favourite occupation of the ladies in the middle ages was making garlands and chaplets of flowers. In the “Lai d’Aristote” (Barbazan, iii. 105, 107), king Alexander’s beautiful mistress is described as descending early in the morning, walking in the garden alone, and making herself a chaplet of flowers. In another fabliau, published in Germany by Adelbert Keller, a Saracenic maiden descends from her chamber into the garden, performs her toilette at the fountain there, and then makes herself a chaplet of flowers and leaves, which she puts on her head. So Emelie, in Chaucer’s “Knights Tale,”--