20 Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, Le Roman de la Rose, ll. 9155–6. Lewis was using Le Roman de la Rose, ed. Ernest Langlois (Paris: Société des Anciens Textes Français, 1914), and either he or Warnie made some errors in transcribing these lines. They are: ‘Toutes estes, sereiz e fustes / De fait ou de volenté putes.’ (‘All women are, will be, or were–either de facto or by intent–whores.’) The best modern edition of Le Roman de la Rose is that of Félix Lecoy (Paris, Les Classiques Français Du Moyen Age, 1965–70). In his edition the same lines are numbered 9125–6 and are given as: ‘Toutes estes, serez et fustes, / de fet ou de volenté, pustes.’ The Romance of the Rose is a 13th century French allegorical romance in octosyllabic couplets. It is cast as an allegorical dream-vision, and describes a young man’s initiation into love and his efforts to possess the rosebud of which he is enamoured. The first 4,058 lines were written c. 1230 by Guillaume de Lorris (d. 1237) and the remaining 17,622 lines of the poem were written c. 1275 by Jean de Meun. About a third of the whole was translated into the Middle English The Romaunt of the Rose, the first part of which may be by Chaucer. The poem, discussed in The Allegory of Love, ch. III, is central to Lewis’s understanding of courtly love. On courtly love see note 72 to the letter of 3 November 1928.