m. verville, in his monograph on nicolas de
caen,[1: paul verville, notice sur la vie de nicolas de caen, p. 112 (rouen, 1911)] considers it probable that the roman de lusignan was printed in bruges by colard mansion at about the same time mansion published the dizain des reines. this is possible; but until a copy of the book is discovered, our sole authority for the romance must continue to be the fragmentary ms. no. 503 in the allonbian collection.
among the innumerable manuscripts in the british museum there is perhaps none which opens a wider field for guesswork. in its entirety the roman de lusignan was, if appearances are to be trusted, a leisured and ambitious handling of the melusina legend; but in the preserved portion melusina figures hardly at all. we have merely the final chapters of what would seem to have been the first half, or perhaps the first third, of the complete narrative; so that this manuscript account of melusina's beguilements breaks off, fantastically, at a period by many years anterior to a date which those better known versions of jean d'arras and thuring von ringoltingen select as the only appropriate starting-point.
by means of a few elisions, however, the episodic story of melicent and of the men who loved melicent has been disembedded from what survives of the main narrative. this episode may reasonably be considered as complete in itself, in spite of its precipitous commencement; we are not told anything very definite concerning perion's earlier relations with melusina, it is true, but then they are hardly of any especial importance. and speculations as to the tale's perplexing chronology, or as to the curious treatment of the ahasuerus legend, wherein nicolas so strikingly differs from his precursors, matthew paris and philippe mouskes, or as to the probable course of latter incidents in the romance (which must almost inevitably have reached its climax in the foundation of the house of lusignan by perion's son raymondin and melusina) are more profitably left to m. verville's ingenuity.
