The Line of Love · Chapter
X: The Envoi Called Semper Idem explained
The final chapter concludes the chronicles of the Dizain des Mariages, summarizing the fate of Cynthia Allonby and Edward Musgrave, whose marriage leads to the American Musgrave family.
What happens
The final chapter concludes the chronicles of the Dizain des Mariages, summarizing the fate of Cynthia Allonby and Edward Musgrave, whose marriage leads to the American Musgrave family. The narrator reflects on the nature of love and marriage, acknowledging that while love may be an illusion, the moments of passion and sacrifice are what give life meaning. The chapter ends with a philosophical meditation on the value of love, even if it leads to marriages of expediency, and a final farewell to the reader.
Themes in this chapter
Love as Illusion
The narrator explicitly calls love an illusion but argues that the fleeting moment of surrender to love is the most high and requisite action of living.
Marriage and Expediency
The chapter concludes that each romance ended in a marriage that 'turned out well enough' in a world where people must consider expediency.
Time and Mortality
The narrator reflects on the passage of time, the completion of the chronicles, and the mortality of the characters, who are now part of history.
Characters to notice
- Cynthia Allonby
Marries Edward Musgrave and emigrates to Virginia, becoming the ancestress of the American Musgrave family.
- Captain Edward Musgrave
Marries Cynthia Allonby and emigrates to Virginia, founding the American Musgrave line.
- Florian de Puysange
Mentioned as having married twice, completing the Dizain of Marriages.
- Sir Adhelmar de Nointel
Mentioned among those who loved greatly despite not always acting sensibly.
- Sir John Falstaff
Described as 'scarcely immaculate' but granted an hour of magnanimity.
- François Villon
Acknowledged as a thief but still capable of great love.
- Kit Marlowe
Noted for leaving 'a wake of emptied bottles' yet loving greatly.
- Will Sommers
Called 'notoriously a fool' but granted a moment of magnanimity.
Key passages
“For epilogue, Cynthia Allonby was duly married to Edward Musgrave, and he made her a fair husband, as husbands go.”
As a final outcome, Cynthia Allonby married Edward Musgrave, who proved to be a decent husband.
Summarizes the concluding marriage of the chronicle.
“Whether you see, in this fleet hour’s abandonment to love, the man’s spark of divinity flaring in momentary splendor—a tragic candle, with divinity guttering and half-choked among the drossier particles, and with momentary splendor lighting man’s similitude to Him in Whose likeness man was created—or whether you, more modernly, detect as prompting this surrender coarse-fibred Nature, in the Prince of Lycia’s role (with all mankind her Troiluses to be cajoled into perpetuation of mankind), you have, in either event, conceded that to live unbefooled by love is at best a shuffling and debt-dodging business, and you have granted this unreasoned, transitory surrender to be the most high and, indeed, the one requisite action which living affords.”
Whether love is seen as a divine spark or a natural trick, it is clear that living without love is a poor bargain, and the momentary surrender to love is the most important thing in life.
The narrator's philosophical conclusion on the value of love.
