Note 3 — Chapter IV · OTHER NARRATIVE AND DIDACTIC POEMS.

A curious collection of all imaginable law cases, called ‘Albres de Batalhas,’ or ‘Tree of Contention,’ and written most likely originally in French, may be mentioned as throwing a curious though faint light on a recent controversy. One of the fictitious actions is between a Frenchman and a licentiate of London who has come to Paris to take his degree in the celebrated university of that city, a case of frequent occurrence, although ‘as every one knows the Kings of France and England are always at war with each other.’ In answer to some argument of the Englishman his antagonist exclaims in his boisterous way: ‘We Frenchmen don’t care about your laws or the emperor who made them.’ What better precedent could the advocates of Queen Victoria’s new title demand than this testimony of an enemy, who curiously enough speaks of his own monarch as the king?