To the Queen came the guard full of zeal:
Haled in bonds the Pretender:
"Shall it be noose or knout, rack or wheel?"
But her proud face grew tender.
Down she stepped from her throne--made him free;
"Love," she said, with a sigh,
"What is rank? You are you, we are we, I am I!"
--_The Cheating of Zenobia_.
I should like to write, just here, a little disquisition on Crises. I
should show how all nature moves ever on and on toward certain
cataclysmic events, each of which marks a point of departure for new
ascents in progression. I should begin, of course, with the Nebular
Hypothesis, its crash of suns, followed by the evolution of the star
and its system of planets, its life, cooling, death, and a fresh crisis
forming a new nebula. I should end with either Revolutions or Malaria,
depending on whether I should last consider the subject in its relation
to sociology or to pathology; but in any case, somewhere along in the
latter third of the work, I should treat of Love and Marriage, and
therein of the Crisis and Catastrophe in Romance.