father that they know their duty right well, and are even willing to perform it:
A vostre bon commandement
Les bayserons et festoyrons,
Trestons le myeulx que nous pourrons,
Mon seigneur, à vostre talent.
Which may be rendered thus:
As it is your orders dear,
We will kiss and make good cheer,
All, so far as in us lies,
Since your wishes that comprise.
Whereupon they kiss the strange gentlemen. In the poem of "Huon de Bordeaux" we are told how Huon's mother, the Duchess of Bordeaux, receives the French king's embassy with kisses. The queen, in Marie de France's Lai de Graelan, sends an ambassador after Graelan to make his acquaintance, and, when he arrives, goes to meet him, and kisses him on the mouth.
In other Romance countries, too, kissing serves as a common mode of greeting, which fact can be incidentally substantiated by means of philology, inasmuch as the Latin verb salutare ('to greet') both in Spanish and Roumanian, and partially in French, has acquired the meaning of 'to kiss.'
