"

It was true. She took the veil as though it were poison. She broke into
the priory violently as the despairful plunge into death. Even that could
not assuage her. But in the burning words which she tore from her breaking
heart the true passion of love, which nothing earthly or divine can still,
for the first time pulsated.

II

THE PURSUIVANTS OF LOVE

There is no immaculate history. If there were it would relate to a better
world. Unable to be immaculate, history usually is stupid, more often
false. Concerning the Middle Ages it has contrived to be absurd. It
attributed the recovery of light to the Tiers etat. Darkness was dispersed
by love, whose gereralissimi were the troubadour and the knight.
Concerning the latter history erred again. Tacitus aiding, it derived
chivalry from Germany. Chivalry originated in the courts of the emirs. The
knight and the troubadour came from Islam. Together they resummoned
civilization.

The world at the time was divided. Long since Europe and Asia had gone
their separate ways. When at last they caught sight of each other, the
Church sickened with horror. There ensued the Crusades in which the Papacy
pitted Christianity against Muhammadanism and staked the authenticity of
each in the result. The result was that Muhammadanism proved its claim. On
the way to it was Byzance.

Beside the bleak burgs, squalid ignorance and abysmal barbarism of Europe,
Byzance isolated and fastidious, luxurious and aloof, learned and subtle,
Roman in body but Greek in soul, contrasted almost supernaturally. Set
apart from and beyond the mediaeval night, her marble basilicas, her golden
domes, her pineapple cupolas covered with colors, her ceaseless and
gorgeous ceremonials, gave her the mysterious beauty of a city shimmering
on uplands of dream. It was a dream, the final flower of Hellenic art. The
people, delicately nurtured on delicate fare, exquisitely dressed in
painted clothes, rather tigerish at heart but exceedingly punctilious,
equally contemptuous and very well bred, must have contrasted too with the
Crusaders.

Contiguous was Persia which, taken by Muhammad, had, with but the magic
wand of her own beauty, transformed his trampling hordes into a superb and
romantic nation, fanatic indeed, quick with the scimitar, born fighters
who had passed thence into Egypt, Andalusia, Syria, Assyria and beyond to
the Indus. The diverse lands they had subjugated and united into one vast
empire.