ribable as "the Life Force," but a very famous kinsman, of
whom one is naively proud, and whom one is on the way to visit.... The
point, in brief, is that His honor and yours are inextricably blended,
and are both implicated in your behavior on the journey.

We nowadays can just cloudily imagine this viewing of life as a sort of
boarding-school from which one eventually goes home, with an official
report as to progress and deportment: and in retaliation for being
debarred from the comforts of this view, the psychoanalysts have no
doubt invented for it some opprobrious explanation. At all events, this
Chivalry was a pragmatic hypothesis: it "worked," and served society for
a long while, not faultlessly of course, but by creating, like all the
other codes of human conduct which men have yet tried, a tragi-comic
melee wherein contended "courtesy and humanity, friendliness, hardihood,
love and friendship, and murder, hate, and virtue, and sin."

3

For the rest, since good wine needs no bush, and an inferior beverage is
not likely to be bettered by arboreal adornment, I elect to piece out
my exordium (however lamely) with "The Printer's Preface." And it runs
in this fashion:

"Here begins the volume called and entitled the Dizain of Queens,
composed and extracted from divers chronicles and other sources of
information, by that extremely venerable person and worshipful man,
Messire Nicolas de Caen, priest and chaplain to the right noble,
glorious and mighty prince in his time, Philippe, Duke of Burgundy, of
Brabant, etc., in the year of the Incarnation of our Lord God a thousand
four hundred and seventy: and imprinted by me, Colard Mansion, at
Bruges, in the year of our said Lord God a thousand four hundred and
seventy-one; at the commandment of the right high, mighty and virtuous
Princess, my redoubted Lady, Isabella of Portugal, by the grace of God
Duchess of Burgundy and Lotharingia, of Brabant and Limbourg, of
Luxembourg and of Gueldres, Countess of Flanders, of Artois, and of
Burgundy, Palatine of Hainault, of Holland, of Zealand and of Namur,
Marquesse of the Holy Empire, and Lady of Frisia, of Salins and of
Mechlin; whom I beseech Almighty God less to increase than to continue
in her virtuous disposition in this world, and after our poor fleet
existence to receive eternally. Amen."

THE PROLOGUE

"_Afin que les entreprises honorables et les nobles aventures et
faicts d'armes soyent noblement enreg