The chevalier d'Auriac

Preface

This story, like its predecessor, has been written in those rare moments of leisure that an Indian official can afford. Bits of time were snatched here and there, and much, perhaps too much, reliance has had to be placed on memory, for books there were few or none to refer to. Occasionally, too, inspiration was somewhat rudely interrupted. Notably in one instance, in the Traveller's Bungalow at Hassan Abdal (Moore's Lalla Rookh was buried hard by), when a bat, after making an ineffectual swoop at a cockroach, fell into the very hungry author's soup and put an end to dinner and to fancy. There is an anachronism in the tale, in which the writer finds he has sinned with M. C. de Remusat in '' Le Saint-Barthelemy.'* The only excuse the writer has for not making the correction is that his object is simply to enable a reader to pass away a dull hour.

Umballa Cantonments, March i6, 1896.

At the Sign of ' The Toison d'Or,' .... 312

PRELUDE

I. In no secret shrine doth my Lady sleep

But is ever before mine eyes ; By well or ill, by wrong or right — By the burning sun, or the moon's pale light —

Where the tropics fire or the fulmar flies, In rest or stormful fight.

II

Good hap with the strong fierce winds that blow ;

Man holdeth the world in fee.

By the light of her face, by my Lady's grace,

Spread we our sails to the sea.

With God above and our hearts below, Fight we the fight for weal or woe.

in.

Good hap with the strong fierce winds that blow,

God rest their souls who die !

By my Lady's grace, by her pure, pale face My pennon flies in its pride of place ;

Where my pennon flies am I.