Sir John Constantine / Memoirs of His Adventures At Home and Abroad and Particularly in the Island of Corsica: Beginning with the Year 1756

by Arthur Quiller-Couch

XXVI. THE FLAME AND THE ALTAR.

XXVII. MY MISTRESS RE-ENLISTS ME.

XXVIII. GENOA.

XXIX. VENDETTA.

XXX. THE SUMMIT AND THE STARS.

POSTSCRIPT.

SIR JOHN CONSTANTINE.

CHAPTER I.

OF THE LINEAGE AND CONDITION OF SIR JOHN CONSTANTINE.

"I have laboured to make a covenant with myself, that affection may not press upon judgment: for I suppose there is no man, that hath any apprehension of gentry or nobleness, but his affection stands to a continuance of a noble name and house, and would take hold of a twig or twine-thread to uphold it: and yet time hath his revolution, there must be a period and an end of all temporal things, finis rerum, an end of names and dignities and whatsoever is terrene. . . . For where is Bohun? Where is Mowbray? Where is Mortimer? Nay, which is more and most of all, where is Plantagenet? They are intombed in the urns and sepulchres of mortality."—Lord Chief Justice Crewe.