Blessed treasures of fancy!
I would not change ye--no, not for many donkey-loads of gold. . . . Fill
again, jolly seneschal, thou brave wag; chalk me up the produce on the
hostel door--surely the spirits of old are mixed up in the wondrous
liquor, and gentle visions of bygone princes and princesses look blandly
down on us from the cloudy perfume of the pipe. Do you know in what
year the fairies left the Rhine?--long before Murray's "Guide-Book"
was wrote--long before squat steamboats, with snorting funnels, came
paddling down the stream. Do you not know that once upon a time the
appearance of eleven thousand British virgins was considered at Cologne
as a wonder? Now there come twenty thousand such annually, accompanied
by their ladies'-maids. But of them we will say no more--let us back to
those who went before them.
Many, many hundred thousand years ago, and at the exact period when
chivalry was in full bloom, there occurred a little history upon the
banks of the Rhine, which has been already written in a book, and hence
must be positively true. 'Tis a story of knights and ladies--of love
and battle, and virtue rewarded; a story of princes and noble lords,
moreover: the best of company. Gentles, an ye will, ye shall hear it.
Fair dames and damsels, may your loves be as happy as those of the
heroine of this romaunt.
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