Three Weeks

Originally Published in 1907

Now in the Public Domain

*****

INTRODUCTION TO

MY AMERICAN READERS

I feel now, when my "Three Weeks" is to be launched in a new land,

where I have many sympathetic friends, that, owing to the

misunderstanding and misrepresentation it received from nearly the

entire press and a section of the public in England, I would like to

state my view of its meaning. (As I wrote it, I suppose it could be

believed I know something about that!) For me "the Lady" was a deep

study, the analysis of a strange Slav nature, who, from circumstances

and education and her general view of life, was beyond the ordinary

laws of morality. If I were making the study of a Tiger, I would not

give it the attributes of a spaniel, because the public, and I myself,

might prefer a spaniel! I would still seek to portray accurately

every minute instinct of that Tiger, to make a living picture. Thus,

as you read, I want you to think of her as such a study. A great

splendid nature, full of the passionate realisation of primitive

instincts, immensely cultivated, polished, blasé. You must see her at

Lucerne, obsessed with the knowledge of her horrible life with her

brutal, vicious husband, to whom she had been sacrificed for political

reasons when almost a child. She suddenly sees this young Englishman,

who comes as an echo of something straight and true in manhood which,

in outward appearance at all events, she has met in her youth in the

person of his Uncle Hubert. She perceives in him at once the Soul

sleeping there; and it produces in her a strong emotion. Then I want

you to understand the effect of Love on them both. In her it rose from

caprice to intense devotion, until the day at the Farm when it reached

the highest point--a desire to reproduce his likeness. How, with the

most passionate physical emotion, her mental influence upon Paul was

ever to raise him to vast aims and noble desires for future

greatness. In him love opened the windows of his Soul, so that he saw

the fine in everything.

The immense rush of passion in Venice came from her knowledge that

they soon must part. Notice the effect of the two griefs on Paul. The

first, with its undefined hope, making him do well in all things--even

his prowess as a hunter--to raise himself to be more worthy in her

eyes; the second and paralysing one of death, turning him into adamant

until his soul awakens again with the returning spring of her spirit

in his heart, and the consolation of the living essence of their love

in the child.