Page:The cream of the jest; a comedy of evasions (IA creamofjestcomed00caberich).pdf/64

 *vendile, coming unintelligibly to Storisende, and witnessing there the long combat between Sir Guiron des Rocques and Maugis d'Aigremont for possession of La Beale Alison—as Kennaston's heroine is called of course in the printed book—seems to us in reading the tale no very striking figure; as in Rob Roy and Esmond, it is not to the narrator, but to the people and events he tells of, that attention is riveted. But Felix Kennaston, writing the book, lived the life of Horvendile in the long happy hours of writing, which became longer and longer; and insensibly his existence blended and was absorbed into the more colorful life of Horvendile. It was as Horvendile he wrote, seeming actually at times to remember what he recorded, rather than to invent

And he called it inspiration

So the tale flowed on, telling how Count Emmerick planned a notable marriage-feast for his sister La Beale Ettarre and Sir Guiron des Rocques, with vastly different results from those already recorded—with the results, in fine, which figure in the printed Men Who Loved Alison, where Horvendile keeps his proper place as a