e to Henry VIII--the story of Charles Brandon
and Mary Tudor, sister to the king.

This story is so well known to the student of English history that I
fear its repetition will lack that zest which attends the development
of an unforeseen denouement. But it is of so great interest, and is so
full, in its sweet, fierce manifestation, of the one thing insoluble
by time, Love, that I will nevertheless rewrite it from old Sir
Edwin's memoir. Not so much as an historical narrative, although I
fear a little history will creep in, despite me, but simply as a
picture of that olden long ago, which, try as we will to put aside the
hazy, many-folded curtain of time, still retains its shadowy lack of
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
holds good. That sentence may not be luminous with meaning, but I will
give you an illustration.

I think it was in the spring of 1509, at any rate soon after the death
of the "Modern Solomon," as Queen Catherine called her old
father-in-law, the late King Henry VII, that his august majesty Henry
VIII, "The Vndubitate Flower and very Heire of both the sayd Linages,"
came to the throne of England, and tendered me the honorable posi