# Horvendile to Ettarre: In the Conciergerie explained — The Cream of the Jest

> Chapter companion for The Cream of the Jest by James Branch Cabell.

## What happens

Horvendile and Ettarre await execution in the Conciergerie during the French Revolution. Horvendile confesses his lifelong search for Ettarre, his disillusionment with earthly love, and his inability to touch her. Ettarre explains that all women reflect her beauty and that their dream is ending. As the doors open to the guillotine, she touches him to end the dream.

## Themes in this chapter

### Dream vs. Reality

The entire scene is a dream within the novel, with Horvendile and Ettarre aware that it is ending.

### Love and Idealization

Horvendile's idealized love for Ettarre contrasts with his disillusionment with earthly women.

### The Limitations of the Flesh

Horvendile laments being unable to touch Ettarre and the prison of the flesh that separates humans from true beauty.

## Character check-ins

### Horvendile

Confesses his lifelong search for Ettarre and his disillusionment with earthly women.

### La Beale Ettarre

Explains that all women reflect her beauty and that the dream is ending.

### Felix Kennaston

Experiences the dream as Horvendile, seeing Ettarre and the guillotine.

### Monsieur le Prince

The Prince de Gâtinais, a condemned émigrant, makes a droll remark about snuff.

## Key lines

> All women resemble me, Horvendile. Whatever flesh they may wear as a garment, and however time-frayed or dull-hued or stained by horrible misuse that garment may seem to be, the wearer of that garment is no less fair than I, could any man see her quite clearly.

Ettarre tells Horvendile that all women are essentially reflections of her beauty, though obscured by their physical forms.

_Highlights the theme of idealization and the illusion of earthly beauty._

> There is no beauty in the world save those stray hints of you, Ettarre. Canvas and stone and verse speak brokenly of you sometimes; all music yearns toward you, Ettarre, all sunsets whisper of you, and it is because they waken memories of you that the eyes of all children so obscurely trouble and delight us.

Horvendile declares that all beauty in art, nature, and human experience is a faint echo of Ettarre's perfection.

_Emphasizes the theme of art and illusion, and the search for meaning through beauty._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_cream_of_the_jest_se/chapters/xxxiii-horvendile-to-ettarre-in-the-conciergerie
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_cream_of_the_jest_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_cream_of_the_jest_se/chapters