The Line of Love | Page 4

least makes a prodigiously fine
appearance until time tarnish it. I entreat you, dear lady, to accept this

traced-out thread with assurances of my most distinguished regard.
The gift is not great. Hereinafter is recorded nothing more weighty than
the follies of young persons, perpetrated in a lost world which when
compared with your ladyship's present planet seems rather callow.
Hereinafter are only love-stories, and nowadays nobody takes
love-making very seriously....
And truly, my dear madam, I dare say the Pompeiians did not take
Vesuvius very seriously; it was merely an eligible spot for a _fête
champêtre_. And when gaunt fishermen first preached Christ about the
highways, depend upon it, that was not taken very seriously, either.
_Credat Judaeus_; but all sensible folk--such as you and I, my dear
madam--passed on with a tolerant shrug, knowing "their doctrine could
be held of no sane man."
* * * * *
APRIL 30, 1293--MAY 1, 1323
"_Pus vezem de novelh florir pratz, e vergiers reverdezir rius e fontanas
esclarzir, ben deu quascus lo joy jauzir don es jauzens_."
It would in ordinary circumstances be my endeavor to tell you, first of
all, just whom the following tale concerns. Yet to do this is not
expedient, since any such attempt could not but revive the question as
to whose 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
end of the thirteenth century, there were elderly persons who
considered the young Vicomte de Puysange to exhibit an indiscreet
resemblance to Jurgen the pawnbroker. In the wild youth of Jurgen,
when Jurgen was a practising poet (declared these persons), Jurgen had
been very intimate with the former Vicomte de Puysange, now dead,
for the two men had much in common. Oh, a great deal more in
common, said these gossips, than the poor vicomte ever suspected, as
you can see for yourself. That was the extent of the scandal, now

happily forgotten, which we must at outset agree to ignore.
All this was in Poictesme, whither the young vicomte had come
a-wooing the oldest daughter of the Comte de la Forêt. The whispering
and the nods did not much trouble Messire Jurgen, who merely
observed that he was used to the buffets of a censorious world; young
Florian never heard of this furtive chatter; and certainly what people
said in Poictesme did not at all perturb the vicomte's mother, that
elderly and pious lady, Madame Félise de Puysange, at her remote
home in Normandy. The principals taking the affair thus quietly, we
may with profit emulate them. So I let lapse this delicate matter of
young Florian's paternity, and begin with his wedding._
CHAPTER I
The Episode Called The Wedding Jest
1. Concerning Several Compacts It is a tale which they narrate in
Poictesme, telling how love began between Florian de Puysange and
Adelaide de la Forêt. They tell also how young Florian had earlier
fancied other women for one reason or another; but that this, he knew,
was the great love of his life, and a love which would endure
unchanged as long as his life lasted.
And the tale tells how the Comte de la Forêt stroked a gray beard, and
said, "Well, after all, Puysange is a good fief--"
"As if that mattered!" cried his daughter, indignantly. "My father, you
are a deplorably sordid person."
"My dear," replied the old gentleman, "it does matter. Fiefs last."
So he gave his consent to the match, and the two young people were
married on Walburga's Eve, on the day that ends April.
And they narrate how Florian de Puysange was vexed by a thought that
was in his mind. He did not know what this thought was. But
something he had overlooked; something there was he had meant to do,

and had not done: and a troubling consciousness of this lurked at the
back of his mind like a small formless cloud. All day, while bustling
about other matters, he had groped toward this unapprehended thought.
Now he had it: Tiburce.
The young Vicomte de Puysange stood in the doorway, looking back
into the bright hall where they of Storisende were dancing at his
marriage feast. His wife, for a whole half-hour his wife, was dancing
with handsome Etienne de Nérac. Her glance met Florian's, and
Adelaide flashed him an especial smile. Her hand went out as though to
touch him, for all that the width of the hall severed them.
Florian remembered presently to smile back at her. Then he went out of
the castle into a starless night that was as quiet as an unvoiced menace.
A small and hard and gnarled-looking moon ruled over the dusk's
secrecy. The moon this night,