sharp detail, toning down and mellowing the hard aspect of real
life--harder and more unromantic even than our own--into the blending
softness of an exquisite mirage.

I might give you the exact words in which Sir Edwin wrote, and shall
now and then quote from contemporaneous chronicles in the language of
his time, but should I so write at all, I fear the pleasure of perusal
would but poorly pay for the trouble, as the English of the Bluff King
is almost a foreign tongue to us. I shall, therefore, with a few
exceptions, give Sir Edwin's memoir in words, spelling and idiom which
his rollicking little old shade will probably repudiate as none of his
whatsoever. So, if you happen to find sixteenth century thought
hob-nobbing in the same sentence with nineteenth century English, be
not disturbed; I did it. If the little old fellow grows grandiloquent
or garrulous at times--_he_ did that. If you find him growing
super-sentimental, remember that sentimentalism was the life-breath of
chivalry, just then approaching its absurdest climax in the bombastic
conscientiousness of Bayard and the whole mental atmosphere laden with
its pompous nonsense.




_CHAPTER I_

_The Duel_


It sometimes happens, Sir Edwin says, that when a woman will she
won't, and when she won't she will; but usually in the end the adage