THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY
_"In elect utteraunce to make memoriall,To thee for souccour, to thee for helpe I call,Mine homely rudeness and dryghness to expellWith the freshe waters of Elyconys well."_
MY DEAR MRS. GRUNDY: You may have observed that nowadays we rank thelove-story among the comfits of literature; and we do this for theexcellent reason that man is a thinking animal by courtesy ratherthan usage.
Rightly considered, the most trivial love-affair is of staggering import.Who are we to question this, when nine-tenths of us owe our existence toa summer flirtation? And while our graver economic and social and psychic"problems" (to settle some one of which is nowadays the object of allponderable fiction) are doubtless worthy of most serious consideration,you will find, my dear madam, that frivolous love-affairs, little andbig, were shaping history and playing spillikins with sceptres longbefore any of these delectable matters were thought of.
Yes, even the most talked-about "questions of the day" are sometimesworthy of consideration; but were it not for the kisses of remote yearsand the high gropings of hearts no longer animate, there would be none toaccord them this same consideration, and a void world would teeter aboutthe sun, silent and naked as an orange. Love is an illusion, if youwill; but always through this illusion, alone, has the next generationbeen rendered possible, and all endearing human idiocies, including"questions of the day," have been maintained.
Love, then, is no trifle. And literature, mimicking life at arespectful distance, may very reasonably be permitted an occasionalreference to the corner-stone of all that exists. For in life "atrivial little love-story" is a matter more frequently aspersed thanfound. Viewed in the light of its consequences, any love-affair is ofgigantic signification, inasmuch as the most trivial is a part ofNature's unending and, some say, her only labor, toward the peopling ofthe worlds.
She is uninventive, if you will, this Nature, but she is tireless.Generation by generation she brings it about that for a period weak menmay stalk as demigods, while to every woman is granted at least one hourwherein to spurn the earth, a warm, breathing angel. Generation bygeneration does Nature thus betrick humanity, that humanity may endure.
Here for a little--with the gracious connivance of Mr. R. E. Townsend,to whom all lyrics hereinafter should be accredited--I have followedNature, the arch-trickster. Through her monstrous tapestry I have tracedout for you the windings of a single thread. It is parti-colored, thisthread--now black for a mourning sign, and now scarlet where blood hasstained it, and now brilliancy itself--for the tinsel of young love(if, as wise men tell us, it be but tinsel), at least makes aprodigiously fine appearance until time tarnish it. I entreat you, dearlady, to accept this traced-out thread with assurances of my mostdistinguished regard.
The gift is not great. Hereinafter is recorded nothing more weighty thanthe follies of young persons, perpetrated in a lost world which whencompared with your ladyship's present planet seems rather callow.Hereinafter are only love-stories, and nowadays nobody takes love-makingvery seriously....
And truly, my dear madam, I dare say the Pompeiians did not take Vesuviusvery seriously; it was merely an eligible spot for a _fete champetre_.And when gaunt fishermen first preached Christ about the highways, dependupon it, that was not taken very seriously, either. _Credat Judaeus_; butall sensible folk--such as you and I, my dear madam--passed on with atolerant shrug, knowing "their doctrine could be held of no sane man."
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APRIL 30, 1293--MAY 1, 1323
"_Pus vezem de novelh florir pratz, e vergiers reverdezir rius e fontanasesclarzir, ben deu quascus lo joy jauzir don es jauzens_."
It would in ordinary circumstances be my endeavor to tell you, first ofall, just whom the following tale concerns. Yet to do this is notexpedient, since any such attempt could not but revive the question as towhose son was Florian de Puysange?
No gain is to be had by resuscitating the mouldy scandal: and, indeed,it does not matter a button, nowadays, that in Poictesme, toward the endof the thirteenth century, there were elderly persons who considered theyoung Vicomte de Puysange to exhibit an indiscreet resemblance to Jurgenthe pawnbroker. In the wild youth of Jurgen, when Jurgen was apractising poet (declared these persons), Jurgen had been very intimatewith the former Vicomte de Puysange, now dead, for the two men had muchin common. Oh, a great deal more in common, said these gossips, than thepoor vicomte ever suspected, as you can see for yourself. That was theextent of the scandal, now happily forgotten, which we must at outsetagree to ignore.
All this was in Poictesme, whither the young vicomte had come a-wooingthe oldest daughter of the Comte de la Foret. The whispering and thenods did not much trouble Messire Jurgen, who merely observed that hewas used to the buffets of a censorious world; young Florian never heardof this furtive chatter; and certainly what people said in Poictesme didnot at all perturb the vicomte's mother, that elderly and pious lady,Madame Felise de Puysange, at her remote home in Normandy. Theprincipals taking the affair thus quietly, we may with profit emulatethem. So I let lapse this delicate matter of young Florian's paternity,and begin with his wedding._