Dorcas’s Reviews > Simon the Jester > Status Update

There was something mediaeval in the combination; put back the clock a few centuries and there we were, the knight and the dwarf, riding together on our quest, while the Lady for whose sake we were making idiots of ourselves was twiddling her fair thumbs in her tower far beyond the seas.

When silken Paris lies bedraggled with rain and mud, she is the forlornest thing under the sky. She is a hollow-eyed pale city, the rouge is washed from her cheeks, her hair hangs dank and dishevelled, in her aspect is desolation, and moaning is in her voice. So long as she is amusing and gay I love her. But when she has the toothache and snivels, she bores me to death.

"I'll make a confession," she said. "Until now I've stuffed away my work when I heard you coming. I didn't think it genteel. What do you think?" I scanned the shapeless mass of linen or tulle or whatever it was on her lap. "I don't know whether it's genteel," I remarked," but at present it looks like nothing on God's earth."

On a murky, sullen November day, Murglebed-on-Sea exhibits unimagined horrors of scenic depravity. It is like a bit of waste land in Gehenna. There is a lowering, soap-suddy thing a mile away from the more or less dry land which local ignorance and superstition call the sea. The interim is mud- oozy, brown malevolent mud. A few foul boats lie buried in it.