The King in Yellow

This story opens with two epigraphs. The first is a quote from Pantagruel, by Rabelais (1471-1553), and translates as: “I will seek out the resolution even unto the bottom of the undrainable well where Heraclitus says the truth lies hidden.” The second epigraph reads:

There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not: ‘the way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid’ (The Bible, KJV), from Proverbs: 30:18-19.

The first-person narrator, Philip, is an American tourist in France. He has wandered away despite the protests from his guide and is lost in the Breton moors. He resigns himself to sleeping in the wilderness and then he sees a falcon attack a rabbit in the brush. He realizes it is a trained falcon when he sees a leather leash on its talons. A moment later, a beautiful girl appears from nowhere. She is shocked and momentarily afraid to see another person. Then she invites him to her manor for the night. She warns him that “to come is easy and takes hours; to go is different—and may take centuries” (73).