Arthur, King of the Britons, under the shade of a weary tree, declared sententiously:
“A bad kiss is as useless to love as a dew moistened log is to a fire.”
Lord Edgard Murray of Melbury thus clarifies:
“Such a sentence might find its very origin in the peculiar ability possessed by one Dorothea of Castlecorr, a supposed ‘special’ friend of Arthur’s, to kiss in the most dreadful of ways. This singular fact could have inspired our callow hero to adopt an exotic and daring behaviour with women, given his unique lip-tongue sensitivity and the utmost respect with which he regarded the loving act of kissing: he would insist – and therefore kiss – the circumstantial female with whom he had established a somehow close and firm relationship as friends (of course the lip acquaintance only occurred if she was pleasant to his senses) in order to immediately discard she who did not possess the lip-shaped secret of love. Guinevere was the chosen one”.
“If a simple grain of sand contains the whole universe, a real kiss contains the past, present and future of love; its most perfect token, its most complete symbol.”