Paladin. One also, in the past, called those famous wandering knights who searched for opportunities to demonstrate their valor and their gallantry, paladins . Combats and love were their sole occupations. To justify that they were not common men, they proclaimed in every place that their mistresses were the most beautiful persons in the world, and also that they obliged those who did not willingly admit this to confess it or to lose their lives.

It is said that this mania began at the court of Arthur, King of England, who very politely and kindly received the knights of his realm and those of foreign countries when they had acquired, through challenges, the reputation of brave and gallant knights. Lancelot, having arrived at the court of this monarch, became the lover of Queen Guinevere, and declared himself her knight. He traveled throughout all the island; he joined various combats from which he emerged victorious; and in this fashion he made himself famous by his warlike feats. He proclaimed the beauty of his mistress and made her well-known as being infinitely above all the other beauties of the earth. Tristan, meanwhile, lover of Queen Isolt, proclaimed in the same way the beauty and the grace of his mistress, with a challenge to all those who would not acknowledge it.

Love based upon the happiness attached to sensual pleasure, upon the charm of loving and of being loved, and also upon the desire to please women, falls more towards one of these three things than towards the two others, depending on the different circumstances in each nation and in each century. In the time of the combats established by the law of the Lombards, it was, says Mr. de Montesquieu, the spirit of gallantry that needed to be strengthened. Paladins , always armed in a part of the world full of castles, of fortresses and of brigands, found honor in punishing injustice and in defending weakness. From this also, in our romances, gallantry based on the idea of love joined with the idea of force and of protection. In this manner gallantry was born—when one imagined extraordinary men, who, seeing virtue joined to beauty and to weakness, were brought to put themselves in danger for it and to please it in the ordinary actions of life. Our chivalric romances flatter this desire to please and give to a part of Europe this spirit of gallantry, which can be said to have been little known by people of olden times.

The prodigious luxury of that immense city of Rome flattered the idea of sensual pleasures. A certain idea of tranquility in the countryside of Greece made it describe the sentiments of love, as one can see in the Greek romances of the Middle Ages. The idea of paladins , protectors of the virtue and the beauty of women, led to that of gallantry. This spirit was perpetuated by the use of Tournaments, which, uniting the rights of valor and of love, also gave a great importance to gallantry. Spirit of the laws.