About the same time, too, I read _Quentin Durward_ and was much impressed by the character of Maugrabin; I had taken note of several of his phrases full of Oriental poetry. I decided to place my drama in the centre of the Middle Ages and to make my two principal personages, a lovely and austere lady of a manor and an Arab slave who, whilst sighing after his native land, is kept tied to the land of exile by a stronger chain than that of slavery. I therefore set to work to hunt about in chronicles of the fifteenth century to find a peg on which to hang my picture. I have always upheld the admirable adaptibility of history in this respect; it never leaves the poet in the lurch. Accordingly, my way of dealing with history is a curious one. I begin by making up a story; I try to make it romantic, tender and dramatic, and, when sentiment and imagination are duly provided, I hunt through history for a framework in which to set them, and it is invariably the case that history furnishes me with such a setting; a setting so perfect and so exactly suited to the subject, that it seems as though the frame had been made to fit the picture, and not the picture to fit the frame. And, once more, chance favoured me and was more than kind. See what I found on page five of the _Chronicles of King Charles VII._, by Maître Alain Chartier homme très-honorable: "And at that time, it happened to a knight called Messire Charles de Savoisy that one of his horse-boys, in riding a horse to let him drink at the river, bespattered a scholar, who, with others, was going in procession to Saint Katherine, to such an extent that the scholar struck the said horse-boy; and, then, the servants of the aforesaid knight sallied forth from his castle armed with cudgels, and followed the said scholars right away to Saint Katherine; and one of the servants of the aforesaid knight shot an arrow into the church as far as to the high altar, where the priest was saying Mass; then, for this fact, the University made such a pursuit after the said knight, that the house of the said knight was smitten down, and the said knight was banished from the kingdom of France and excommunicated. He betook himself to the pope, who gave him absolution, and he armed four galleys and went over the seas, making war on the Saracens, and there gained much possessions. Then he returned and made his peace, and rebuilt his house in Paris, in fashion as before; but he was not yet finished, and caused his house of Signelay (Seignelais) in Auxerrois to be beautifully built by the Saracens whom he had brought from across the sea; the which château is three leagues from Auxerre." It will be seen that history had thought of everything for me, and provided me with a frame which had been waiting for its picture for four hundred years.