"...where she would tantalize me nightly, from her balcony, after the example of the Veronese lady in Shakespeare's spirited tragedy, which she prodigiously admired.
As concerns myself, a reasonable liking for romance had been of late somewhat tempered by the inclemency of the weather and the obvious unfriendliness of the dog; but there is no resisting a lady's commands..."

Yet another in the long line of Cabell’s historical romance short story collections. Its all filigree and artificiality but completely self-aware both from the authorial point of view and that of its characters who are generally quite practical at heart regardless of their pretensions for high romance.

Each story is presented like a scene from a play to add to the idea of life as stage sort of thing. Unlike most of Cabell’s story collections which are spread throughout time this one is much more connected with each tale leading on from the one before.
So a side-character in one will be the main character in the next, or the villain in one might be the hero in the following.
Personally i prefer the more historically spread collections but this format does allow you to see a different perspective on some of the previous stories and characters.

I think its probably the nicest of Cabell’s works. Usually the ratio of sweet to bitter in Cabell’s books is about 50/50 or worse but this is more like 80/20.
Its very nicely written but its happily-ever-afterness did start to grate on me a bit, of course my favourite Cabell so far is Figures of Earth, probably his bitterest work :P .

After i finished the final proper chapter it was still going to be 4-stars but probably the Cabell work i would have least liked to reread.
However the afterpiece really brings everything together and actually makes me want to reread the whole thing again keeping in mind the effect of the whole rather than seeing it as a series of tales.

"...and my children will be reared on moral aphorisms and rational food, with me as a handy example of everything they should avoid. Deuce take it, Amalia," he added, "a father must in common decency furnish an example to his children!" ( )