Produced by Distributed Proofreaders
My story will take you into times and spaces alike rude and uncivil.Blood will be spilt, virgins suffer distresses; the horn will soundthrough woodland glades; dogs, wolves, deer, and men, Beauty and theBeasts, will tumble each other, seeking life or death with their propertools. There should be mad work, not devoid of entertainment. When youread the word Explicit, if you have laboured so far, you will knowsomething of Morgraunt Forest and the Countess Isabel; the Abbot ofHoly Thorn will have postured and schemed (with you behind the arras);you will have wandered with Isoult and will know why she was called LaDesirous, with Prosper le Gai, and will understand how a man may fallin love with his own wife. Finally, of Galors and his affairs, of thegreat difference there may be between a Christian and the brutes, oflove and hate, grudging and open humour, faith and works, cloisters andthoughts uncloistered—all in the green wood—you will know as much asI do if you have cared to follow the argument. I hope you will not askme what it all means, or what the moral of it is. I rank myself withthe historian in this business of tale-telling, and consider that mysole affair is to hunt the argument dispassionately. Your romancer mustbe neither a lover of his heroine nor (as the fashion now sets) of hischief rascal. He must affect a genial height, that of a jigger ofstrings; and his attitude should be that of the Pulpiteer:—Heaven helpyou, gentlemen, but I know what is best for you! Leave everything to me.
It is related of Prosper le Gai, that when his brother Malise, Baron ofStarning and Parrox, showed him the door of their father's house, andshowed it with a meaning not to be mistaken, he stuck a sprig of greenholly in his cap. He put on his armour; his horse and sword also hetook: he was for the wilds. Baron Jocelyn's soul, the priests reported,was with God; his body lay indubitably under a black effigy in StarningChurch. Baron Malise was lord of the fee, with a twisted face forProsper whenever they