The ordinary lot of women is to be more good than beautiful or more beautiful than good. But the Duchess of Clarides was as good as she was beautiful, and she was so beautiful that the princes who had only seen her picture had wished to marry her. To all their proposals she answered:

"As I have but one soul I will never have but one husband."

Yet she only wore mourning for five years. Then she put off her long veil and her black clothes, for she did not like to depress those around her or to prevent them smiling or being merry in her presence. Her Duchy included large tracts of land, and lonely moors covered in all their vast extent with heather; also lakes where fishermen caught fish, some of which were magical, and mountains, terrible and lonely, beneath which the dwarfs lived in their underground kingdom.