The Prologue
A Sa Dame
Inasmuch as it was by your command, illustrious and exalted lady, that Ihave gathered together these stories to form the present little book,you should the less readily suppose I have presumed to dedicate to yourSerenity this trivial offering because of my esteeming it to be notundeserving of your acceptance. The truth is otherwise: your postulantapproaches not spurred toward you by vainglory, but rather by equity,and equity's plain need to acknowledge that he who seeks to write ofnoble ladies must necessarily implore at outset the patronage of her whois the light and mainstay of our age. I humbly bring my book to you asPhidyle approached another and less sacred shrine, _farre pio etsaliente mica_, and lay before you this my valueless mean tribute not asappropriate to you but as the best I have to offer.
It is a little book wherein I treat of divers queens and of theirlove-business; and with necessitated candor I concede my chosen field tohave been harvested, and scrupulously gleaned, by many writers ofinnumerable conditions. Since Dares Phrygius wrote of Queen Heleine, andVirgil (that shrewd necromancer) of Queen Dido, a preponderating mass ofclerks, in casting about for high and serious matter, have chosen, asthough it were by common instinct, to dilate upon the amours of royalwomen. Even in romance we scribblers must contrive it so that the fairNicolete shall be discovered in the end to be no less than the King'sdaughter of Carthage, and that Sir Dooen of Mayence shall never sink inhis love affairs beneath the degree of a Saracen princess; and we arebacked in this old procedure not only by the authority of Aristotle but,oddly enough, by that of reason.
Kings have their policies and wars wherewith to drug each humanappetite. But their consorts are denied these makeshifts; and love mayrationally be defined as the pivot of each normal woman's life, and inconsequence as the arbiter of that ensuing life which is eternal.Because--as anciently Propertius demanded, though not, to speak thetruth, of any woman--
Quo fugis? ah demens! nulla est fuga, tu licet usque Ad Tanaim fugias, usque sequetur amor.
And a dairymaid, let us say, may love whom she will, and nobody else bea penny the worse for her mistaking of the preferable nail whereon tohang her affections; whereas with a queen this choice is moreportentous. She plays the game of life upon a loftier table, ruthlesslyilluminated, she stakes by her least movement a tall pile of counters,some of which are, of necessity, the lives and happiness of persons whomshe knows not, unless it be by vague report. Grandeur sells itself atthis hard price, and at no other. A queen must always play, in fine, asthe vicar of destiny, free to choose but very certainly compelled in theensuing action to justify that choice: as is strikingly manifested bythe authentic histories of Brunhalt, and of Guenevere, and of swartCleopatra, and of many others that were born to the barbaric queenhoodsof extinct and dusty times.
All royal persons are (I take it) the immediate and the responsiblestewards of Heaven; and since the nature of each man is like a troubledstream, now muddied and now clear, their prayer must ever be, _Defendame, Dios, de me_! Yes, of exalted people, and even of their nearassociates, life, because it aims more high than the aforementionedAristotle, demands upon occasion a more great catharsis, which wouldpurge any audience of unmanliness, through pity and through terror,because, by a quaint paradox, the players have been purged of humanity.For a moment Destiny has thrust her scepter into the hands of a humanbeing and Chance has exalted a human being to decide the issue of manyhuman lives. These two--with what immortal chucklings one may facilelyimagine--have left the weakling thus enthroned, free to direct the heavyoutcome, free to choose, and free to evoke much happiness or age-longweeping, but with no intermediate course unbarred. _Now prove thyself_!saith Destiny; and Chance appends: _Now prove thyself to be at bottom agod or else a beast, and now eternally abide that choice. And now_ (Ocrowning irony!) _we may not tell thee clearly by which choice thoumayst prove either_.
In this little book about the women who intermarried, not very enviably,with an unhuman race (a race predestinate to the red ending which I havechronicled elsewhere, in _The Red Cuckold_), it is of ten such momentsthat I treat.
You alone, I think, of all persons living, have learned, as you havesettled by so many instances, to rise above mortality in such a testing,and unfailingly to merit by your conduct the plaudits and the adorationof our otherwise dissentient world. You have often spoken in the steadof Destiny, with nations to abide your verdict; and in so doing haveboth graced and hallowed your high vicarship. If I forbear to speak ofthis at greater length, it is because I dare not couple your well-knownperfection with any imperfect encomium. Upon no plea, however, can anyone forbear to acknowledge that he who seeks to write of noble ladiesmust necessarily implore at outset the patronage of her who is the lightand mainstay of our age.
_Therefore to you, madame--most excellent and noble lady, to whom I loveto owe both loyalty and love--I dedicate this little book._