, and gives
you no rest, you take patience with her for the sake of her miserable
egg--and sometimes she will break more in your house than she herself
is worth, yet you bear it in patience for the egg's sake. Many
fidgetty fellows, who sometimes see their wives turn out less neat and
dainty than they would like, smite them forthwith; and meanwhile the
hen may make a mess on the table, and you suffer her. Have patience;
it is not right to beat your wife for every cause, no!"

At the commencement of this Introduction I stated that Marie's
romances are concerned mainly with love. Her talent was not very
wide nor rich, and I have no doubt that there were facets of her
personality which she was unable to get upon paper. The prettiest
girl in the world can only give what she has to give. By the time any
reader reaches the end of this volume he will be assured that the
stories are stories of love. Probably he will have noticed also that,
in many cases, the lady who inspires the most delicate of sentiments
is, incidentally, a married woman. He may ask why this was so; and in
answer I propose to conclude my paper with a few observations upon the
subject of mediaeval love.

I doubt in my own mind whether romance writers do not exaggerate what
was certainly a characteristic of the Middle Ages. To be ordinary
is to be uninteresting; and it is obvious that the stranger the
experience, the more likely is it to attract the interest and
attention of the hearer. Blessed is the person--as well as the
country--who has no history. But it was really very difficult for
the twelfth century poet to write a love story, with a maiden as the
central figure. The noble maiden seldom had a love story. It is
true enough that she was sometimes referred to in the choice of her
husband: two young ladies in "A Story of Beyond the Sea" are both
consulted in the matter. As a rule, however, her inclination was not
permitted to stand in the way of the interests of her parents or
guardians. She was betrothed in childhood, and married very young, for
mercenary or political reasons, to a husband much older than herself.
We read of a girl of twelve being married to a man of fifty. There was
no great opportunity for a love story here; and the strange entreaty,
on the part of the nameless French poet, to love the maidens for the
sake of Christ's love, passed over the heads of the romance writers.
Not that the mediaeval maidens showed any shrinking from matrimon