The ideal man represented by Jurgen and Dom Manuel was reincarnated in the person of Florian de Puysange. The book which deals with him is less loaded with allegory than the previous one, and its philosophy is more superficial. In atmosphere and tone it is very French, with an eighteenth-century tang. It is a masterpiece of Cabellian irony. Anglo-Saxon countries are richer in humorists than in ironists. Irony comes with a certain mobility of the mind, a certain dilettantism, a display of the ego with which Anglo-Saxons are not very familiar. They are a practical and realistic race. Socially, and morally speaking, irony is a dangerous weapon. Humor is amusing, but, even when it is somber, it remains optimistic. It rests on an ethical background. Irony comes with skepticism, and skepticism is not popular among Anglo-Saxons. Add to this the pressure of public opinion and of social constraint. From a certain point of view, irony is an equivocation and a game ill tolerated by practical and respectable people; yet it is irony which is James Branch Cabell’s forte. The story of Florian de Puysange is a masterpiece on this score. “The High Place” may be connected with the saga of Dom Manuel and Jurgen. Like “Jurgen,” it is again the triumph of a dream. The time is the sunset of the Roi Soleil. The scene is still the mystical kingdom of Poictesme, located in the forest of Acaire between the Mediterranean and the Cévennes. One afternoon the hero of the book, a ten-year-old child, fell asleep in a beautiful garden while reading the tales of M. Perrault. A vernal breeze was blowing in the park. Florian de Puysange had a dream. All of Cabell’s novels begin thus with a plunge into dreamland. The transition from consciousness to dream in his books is operated through various means, usually magical. In this case, Florian de Puysange was bewitched by a book, and fell asleep in a beautiful garden. Florian was a scion of Jurgen’s line. He inherited dreaming. In his dream he finds himself taken to a “high place.” The dream is that of a beautiful woman asleep in an enchanted garden. Florian at this time was only ten years old, but he was to live his whole life in anticipation. Jurgen’s dreams had been retrospective. Those of Florian de Puysange took place in the future. He climbed the slopes of a high mountain, atop of which the beautiful Melior, guarded by the Saint Hoprig, awaited him. Saint Hoprig, who would have done honor even to Anatole France, was a rather broad-minded saint. Of course he accomplished miracles and aided Florian in conquering Melior. Florian married the fairy. Let us interpret this as signifying that Florian, freed by sleep from the necessities of ordinary life, succeeded in marrying the ideal. The story of Florian’s allegorical nuptials is in the author’s best manner. He goes back in this to the erotic symbolism of “Jurgen.” Here is the marriage scene: