ho bade me compile you. Bow down before her
judgment. And if her sentence be that of a fiery death, I counsel you
not to grieve at what cannot be avoided.

But, if by any miracle that glorious, strong fortress of the weak
consider it advisable that you remain unburned, pass thence, my little
book, to every man who may desire to purchase you, and live out your
little hour among these very credulous persons; and at your appointed
season perish and be forgotten. Thus may you share your betters' fate,
and be at one with those famed comedies of Greek Menander and all the
poignant songs of Sappho. _Et quid Pandoniae_--thus, little book, I
charge you to poultice your more-merited oblivion--_quid Pandoniae
restat nisi nomen Athenae?_

Yet even in your brief existence you may chance to meet with those who
will affirm that the stories you narrate are not true and protest
assertions which are only fables. To these you will reply that I, your
maker, was in my youth the quite unworthy servant of the most high and
noble lady, Dame Jehane, and in this period, at and about her house of
Havering-Bower, conversed in my own person with Dame Katharine, then
happily remarried to a private gentleman of Wales; and so obtained the
matter of the ninth story and of the tenth authentically. You will say
also that Messire de Montbrison afforded me the main matter of the
sixth and seventh stories, and many of the songs which this book
contains; and that, moreover, I once journeyed to Caer Idion and
talked for some two hours with Richard Holland (whom I found a very
old and garrulous and cheery person), and got of him the matter of the
eighth tale in this dizain, together with much information as concerns
the sixth and the seventh. And you will add that the matter of the
fourth and fifth tales was in every detail related to me by my most
illustrious mistress, Madame Isabella of Portugal, who had this
information from her mother, an equally veracious and immaculate lady,
and one that was in youth Dame Philippa's most dear associate. For the
rest you must admit, unwillingly, the first three stories in this book
to be a thought less solidly confirmed; although (as you will say)
even in these histories I have not ever deviated from what was at odd
times narrated to me by the aforementioned persons, and have always
endeavored honestly to piece together that which they told me.

I have pieced together these tales about the women who intermarried,
not v