James Branch Cabell made this book so that he who wills may read the story of mans eternally unsatisfied hunger in search of beauty. Ettarre stays inaccessible always and her loveliness is his to look on only in his dreams. All men she must evade at the last and many are the ways of her elusion.

Afterpiece : a hidden inscription on the Sigil of Scoteia - The Cream of the Jest (1917)