Dare I say it? Dare I say that I, a plain old prosaic lieutenant in the Republican Service have done all these incredible things here set forth, and done them for the love of a woman -- No, not for a woman, for a mere chimera in female shape; for a pale, vapid ghost of a real woman's loveliness? I know you will laugh if I simply give you the summary of my travails.
I know that you would hastily cast me aside as a fabricator; an unpolished liar, and I pause and deign to quit, and then I sigh again and pick up my pen and collect the scattered pages, for I MUST write this story and give it to the world – I am constrained to share the pallid splendor of that thing I loved, and won, and lost, and that is ever before me, and will not be forgotten or shunted aside.
The tumult of the struggle into which that vision led me still throbs in my mind, the soft, lisping voices of the planet I ransacked for its sake and the roar of the destruction which followed me back from the quest drowns all other sounds in my ears! I must and will write this story -- it relieves the tremors of my mind to write out the facts as they really happened; so read, read and believe me as you list.