"Whatever people have done, I have been happy and sung of my love."
After Ulrich has told the story of his worldly and sentimental career, he stops to think over the cause to which that career has been consecrated. Has he made a mistake? Never! "When beauty and goodness unite in woman, she is admirable; one whose goodness is clothed with a noble spirit wears the best of garments. Even though a woman has little beauty, if she has the raiment of goodness, men yet call her fair. Be sure that no clothes better become a lady than goodness--it is better than beauty, though that is excellent. By goodness a poor woman will become truly a lady, and this the rich cannot be without it; nay, shapely and noble though she may be, without this she is still no womanly woman." ...
"Whoever loves the sight of pretty women," he goes on, "and will not notice their goodness but only their bright charm, is like one who gathers pretty flowers for their bright beauty's sake, and twines them into a garland; then, finding that they are not fragrant, he is sorry that he gathered them. But whoever understands plants, lets those grow which have no sweet odor, and breaks off fragrant flowers."
For over thirty years he has served ladies, and he knows no truth so certain as this, that nothing equals the mutual happiness of a true woman and a loving man.
Yet sentiment can play only a minor part in life, after all. There are four main objects of exertion, and upon these, as he ends his book, the poet stops to reflect: The grace of God, honor, ease, and wealth. Some strive for one, some for another, while others aim ineffectively at all, win none, and hate themselves.
And what has this old German gallant to say of himself? In all these revelations of his life, we catch no suggestions of selfishness or meanness, but while fancying himself enacting high chivalric drama, he has been wearing cap, and bells, and motley, lance in his left hand, a bauble in his right. Then, too, he has been so self-satisfied with his rôle. Well, the play is finished now, and Ulrich is sitting in the green-room, thinking. His coat is flung aside, with one last jingle the bells fall to the floor, he has dropped his bauble, and as he bows his head and in his musing runs his fingers through his hair, the coxcomb falls too. It is here in the green-room that he speaks his epilogue: