these lives made out of loves that long since were

lives wrought as ours of earth and burning air,

was such not theirs, the twain i take, and give

out of my life to make their dead life live

some days of mine, and blow my living breath

between dead lips forgotten even of death?

so many and many of old have given my twain

love and live song and honey-hearted pain.

thus, rather suddenly, ends our knowledge of the love-business between perion and melicent. for at this point, as abruptly as it began, the one existing chronicle of their adventures makes conclusion, like a bit of interrupted music, and thereby affords conjecture no inconsiderable bounds wherein to exercise itself. yet, in view of the fact that deductions as to what befell these lovers afterward can at best result in free-handed theorising, it seems more profitable in this place to speak very briefly of the fragmentary roman de lusignan, since the history of melicent and perion as set forth in this book makes no pretensions to be more than a rendering into english of this manuscript, with slight additions from the earliest known printed version of 1546.