text:  The famous siege of Paris by the Saracens in the time of Charlemagne which was so often expected during the middle ages that it at last came to be believed to have been real was the main point of his story; but he diverges from it so often in search of adventures with particular knights that we wellnigh forget the principal object of the poem and feel no absorbing interest in the issue of any particular events or the exploits of any particular heroes