The Certain Hour | Page 9

by substituting, for the books
herein referred
to, the "vital" and more widely talkedof
novels of the summer of
1916, the task would be but
wasted labor; since even these
fascinating chronicles,
one comprehends forlornly, must needs be
equally
obsolete by the time these proof-sheets have been made
into
a volume. With malice aforethought, therefore,
the books and authors
named herein stay those which all
of three years back our reviewers
and advertising
pages, with perfect gravity, acclaimed as of

enduring importance. For the quaintness of that
opinion, nowadays,
may profitably round the moral that
there is really nothing whereto
one may fittingly
compare a successful contribution to "vital"
readingmatter,
as touches evanescence.
And this is as it should be. Tout passe.--L'art
robust seul a l'eternite,
precisely as Gautier points
out, with bracing common-sense; and it is
excellent
thus to comprehend that to-day, as always, only through

exercise of the auctorial virtues of distinction and
clarity, of beauty
and symmetry, of tenderness and
truth and urbanity, may a man in
reason attempt to
insure his books against oblivion's voracity.
Yet the desire to write perfectly of beautiful
happenings is, as the
saying runs, old as the hills--
and as immortal. Questionless, there
was many a
serviceable brick wasted in Nineveh because finicky

persons must needs be deleting here and there a phrase
in favor of its
cuneatic synonym; and it is not
improbable that when the outworn
sun expires in
clinkers its final ray will gild such zealots tinkering

with their "style." This, then, is the conclusion of
the whole matter.
Some few there must be in every age
and every land of whom life
claims nothing very
insistently save that they write perfectly of
beautiful
happenings. And even we average-novel-readers know it


is such folk who are to-day making in America that
portion of our
literature which may hope for
permanency.
Dumbarton Grange
1914-1916
BELHS CAVALIERS
"For this RAIMBAUT DE VAQUIERAS lived at a time
when
prolonged habits of extra-mundane contemplation,
combined with the
decay of real knowledge, were apt to
volatilize the thoughts and
aspirations of the best and
wisest into dreamy unrealities, and to lend
a false air
of mysticism to love. . . . It is as if the
intellect and the
will had become used to moving
paralytically among visions, dreams,
and mystic
terrors, weighed down with torpor."
Fair friend, since that hour I took leave of thee
I have not slept nor
stirred from off my knee,
But prayed alway to God, S. Mary's Son,

To give me back my true companion;
And soon it will be Dawn.
Fair friend, at parting, thy behest to me
Was that all sloth I should
eschew and flee,
And keep good Watch until the Night was done:

Now must my Song and Service pass for none?
For soon it will be Dawn.
RAIMBAUT DE VAQUIERAS. Aubade,
from F. York Powells
version.
BELHS CAVALIERS
You may read elsewhere of the long feud that was
between
Guillaume de Baux, afterward Prince of Orange,
and his kinsman
Raimbaut de Vaquieras. They were not
reconciled until their youth
was dead. Then, when
Messire Raimbaut returned from battling

against the
Turks and the Bulgarians, in the 1,210th year from

man's salvation, the Archbishop of Rheims made peace
between the
two cousins; and, attended by Makrisi, a
converted Saracen who had
followed the knight's
fortunes for well nigh a quarter of a century, the
Sire
de Vaquieras rode homeward.
Many slain men were scattered along the highway
when he came
again into Venaissin, in April, after an
absence of thirty years. The
crows whom his passing
disturbed were too sluggish for long flights
and many
of them did not heed him at all. Guillaume de Baux was

now undisputed master of these parts, although, as this
host of mute,
hacked and partially devoured witnesses
attested, the contest had
been dubious for a while: but
now Lovain of the Great-Tooth, Prince
Guillaume's
last competitor, was captured; the forces of Lovain

were scattered; and of Lovain's lieutenants only Mahi
de Vernoil was
unsubdued.
Prince Guillaume laughed a little when he told his
kinsman of the
posture of affairs, as more loudly did
Guillaume's gross son, Sire
Philibert. But Madona
Biatritz did not laugh. She was the widow of

Guillaume's dead brother--Prince Conrat, whom Guillaume

succeeded--and it was in her honor that Raimbaut had
made those
songs which won him eminence as a
practitioner of the Gay Science.
Biatritz said, "It is a long while since we two
met."
He that had been her lover all his life said,
"Yes."
She was no longer the most beautiful of women, no
longer his
be-hymned Belhs Cavaliers--you may read
elsewhere how he came to
call her that in all his
canzons--but only a fine and gracious stranger.
It was
uniformly gray, that soft and plentiful hair, where
once such
gold had flamed as dizzied him to think of
even now; there was no
crimson in these thinner lips;
and candor would have found her eyes

less wonderful
than those Raimbaut had dreamed of very often
among an
alien and hostile people. But he lamented nothing, and
to
him she was as ever Heaven's most splendid miracle.
"Yes," said this old Raimbaut,--"and even to-day we
have not
reclaimed the Sepulcher as yet. Oh, I doubt
if we shall ever win it,
now that your brother