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He found a woman, the possessor still of a compelling beauty. Oh, yes, past
doubt: but this woman was a stranger to him, as he now knew with an odd sense
of sickness. Thus, then, had ended the quest of Melicent.
Their love had flouted Time and Fate. These had revenged his insolence, it
seemed to Perion, by an ironical conversion of each rebel into another
person. For this was not the girl whom Perion had loved in far redroofed
Poictesme; this was not the girl for whom Perion had fought ten minutes
since: and heas Perion for the first time perceivedwas not and never could be
any more the Perion that girl had bidden return to her.
It were as easy to evoke the Perion who had loved Mélusine. . . .
Then Perion perceived that love may be a power so august as to bedwarf
consideration of the man and woman whom it sways. He saw that this is
reasonable. I cannot justify this knowledge. I cannot even tell you just
what great secret it was of which Perion became aware. Many men have seen the
sunrise, but the serenity and awe and sweetness of this daily miracle, the
huge assurance which it emanates that the beholder is both impotent and
greatly beloved, is not entirely an affair of the sky's tincture. And thus
it was with Perion. He knew what he could not explain. He knew such joy and
terror as none has ever worded. A curtain had lifted briefly; and the
familiar world which Perion knew about had appeared, for that brief instant,
to be a painting upon that curtain.
Now, dazzled, he saw Melicent for the first time. . . .
I think he saw the lines already forming in her face, and knew that, but for
him, this woman, naked now of gear and friends, had been tonight a queen
among her own acclaiming people. I think he worshipped where he did not dare
to love, as every man cannot but do when starkly confronted by the divine and
stupendous unreason of a woman's choice, among so many other men, of him.
And yet, I think that Perion recalled what
Ayrart de Montors had said of women and their love, so long ago:"They are
more wise than we; and always they make us better by indomitably believing we
are better than in reality a man can ever be."
I think that Perion knew, now, de Montors had been in the right. The pity and
mystery and beauty of that world wherein High God hadscornfully?placed a smug
Perion, seemed to the Comte de la Forêt, I think, unbearable. I think a new
and finer love smote Perion as a sword strikes.
I think he did not speak because there was no scope for words. I know that
he knelt (incurious for once of victory) before this stranger who was not the
Melicent whom he had sought so long, and that all consideration
Domnei: A Comedy of WomanWorship
30. How Melicent Conquered
56
of a lost young Melicent departed from him, as mists leave our world when the
sun rises.
I think that this was her high hour of triumph.
CÆTERA DESUNT
THE AFTERWORD
These lives made out of loves that long since were
Lives wrought as ours of earth and burning air, Was such not theirs, the twain
I take, and give
Out of my life to make their dead life live
Some days of mine, and blow my living breath
Between dead lips forgotten even of death?
So many and many of old have given my twain
Love and live song and honeyhearted pain.
THUS, rather suddenly, ends out knowledge of the lovebusiness between Perion
and
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Melicent. For at this point, as abruptly as it began, the one existing
chronicle of their adventures makes conclusion, like a bit of interrupted
music, and thereby affords conjecture no inconsiderable bounds wherein to
exercise itself. Yet, in view of the fact that deductions as to what befell
these lovers afterward can at best result in freehanded theorising, it seems
more profitable in this place to speak very briefly of the fragmentary
Roman de
Lusignan, since the history of Melicent and Perion as set forth in this book
makes no pretensions to be more than a rendering into English of this
manuscript, with slight additions from the earliest known printed version of
1546.
2
M. Verville, in his monograph on Nicolas de Caen, [1] considers it probable
that the
Roman de Lusignan was printed in Bruges by Colard Mansion at about eh same
time Mansion published the
Dizain des Reines
. This is possible; but until a copy of the book is discovered, our sole
authority for the romance must continue to be the fragmentary MS. No. 503 in
the
Allonbian Collection.
Among the innumerable manuscripts in the British Museum there is perhaps none
which opens a wider field for guesswork. In its entirety the
Roman de Lusignan was, if appearances are to be trusted, a leisured and
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