Guido and Isolde, though they had never met, cherished each the features of the other.  Beneath his coat of mail Guido carried a miniature of Isolde, carven on ivory.  He had found it at the bottom of the castle crag, between the castle and the old town of Ghent at its foot.

How did he know that it was Isolde?

There was no need for him to ask.

His heart had spoken.

The eye of love cannot be deceived.

And Isolde?  She, too, cherished beneath her stomacher a miniature of Guido the Gimlet.  She had it of a travelling chapman in whose pack she had discovered it, and had paid its price in pearls.  How had she known that he it was, that is, that it was he?  Because of the Coat of Arms emblazoned beneath the miniature.  The same heraldic design that had first shaken her to the heart.  Sleeping or waking it was ever before her eyes:  A lion, proper, quartered in a field of gules, and a dog, improper, three-quarters in a field of buckwheat.

And if the love of Isolde burned thus purely for Guido, the love of
Guido burned for Isolde with a flame no less pure.

No sooner had love entered Guido’s heart than he had determined to do some great feat of emprise or adventure, some high achievement of deringdo which should make him worthy to woo her.

He placed himself under a vow that he would eat nothing, save only food, and drink nothing, save only liquor, till such season as he should have performed his feat.

For this cause he had at once set out for Jerusalem to kill a Saracen for her.  He killed one, quite a large one.  Still under his vow, he set out again at once to the very confines of Pannonia determined to kill a Turk for her.  From Pannonia he passed into the Highlands of Britain, where he killed her a Caledonian.

Every year and every month Guido performed for Isolde some new achievement of emprise.

And in the meantime Isolde waited.

It was not that suitors were lacking.  Isolde the Slender had suitors in plenty ready to do her lightest hest.

Feats of arms were done daily for her sake.  To win her love suitors were willing to vow themselves to perdition.  For Isolde’s sake, Otto the Otter had cast himself into the sea.  Conrad the Cocoanut had hurled himself from the highest battlement of the castle head first into the mud.  Hugo the Hopeless had hanged himself by the waistband to a hickory tree and had refused all efforts to dislodge him.  For her sake Sickfried the Susceptible had swallowed sulphuric acid.

But Isolde the Slender was heedless of the court thus paid to her.

In vain her stepmother, Agatha the Angular, urged her to marry.  In vain her father, the Margrave of Buggensberg, commanded her to choose the one or the other of the suitors.

Her heart remained unswervingly true to the Gimlet.

From time to time love tokens passed between the lovers.  From Jerusalem Guido had sent to her a stick with a notch in it to signify his undying constancy.  From Pannonia he sent a piece of board, and from Venetia about two feet of scantling.  All these Isolde treasured.  At night they lay beneath her pillow.