Note 57 — BOOK X.

Several authors have thought that Villehardouin could not write; and they found their opinion upon what he himself says,—“I, who dictated this work.” However that may be, the history of Villehardouin has been pronounced by learned men to be a model of the language that has ceased to be French. In the sixteenth century the language of the marshal of Champagne was already not understood; his history was turned into modern French by Blaise de Vigenère towards the end of the sixteenth century; this translation has itself become so old as to be now scarcely intelligible. The new version that Ducange made of it in the seventeenth century still bears an impression of antiquity, which preserves something of the naïveté of the original. We shall often have occasion to quote Villehardouin; but we shall only quote the ancient versions, and sometimes from a translation we have ourselves made, always endeavouring to preserve as far as possible the simplicity of the old language.