The Cream of the Jest: A comedy of evasions

by James Branch Cabell

BOOK FIRST

I	Introduces the Ageless Woman	[3]
II	Wherein a Clerk Appraises a Fair Country	[11]
III	Of the Double-Dealer’s Traffic with a Knave	[15]
IV	How the Double-Dealer was of Two Minds	[19]
V	Treats of Maugis d’Aigremont’s Pottage	[23]
VI	Journeys End: with the Customary Unmasking	[26]

BOOK SECOND

I	Of a Trifle Found in Twilight	[37]
II	Beyond Use and Wont Fares the Road to Storisende	[40]
III	Of Idle Speculations in a Library	[49]
IV	How There was a Light in the Fog	[55]
V	Of Publishing: with an Unlikely Appendix	[61]
VI	Suggesting Themes of Universal Appeal	[72]
VII	Peculiar Conduct of a Personage	[80]
VIII	Of Vain Regret and Wonder in the Dark	[93]

BOOK THIRD

I	They Come to a High Place	[103]
II	Of the Sigil and One Use of It	[107]
III	Treats of a Prelate and, in Part, of Pigeons	[110]
IV	Local Laws of Nephelococcygia	[118]
V	Of Divers Fleshly Riddles	[125]
VI	In Pursuit of a Whisper	[130]
VII	Of Truisms: Treated Reasonably	[136]

BOOK FOURTH

I	Economic Considerations of Piety	[143]
II	Deals with Pen Scratches	[150]
III	By-Products of Rational Endeavor	[156]
IV	“Epper Si Muove”	[163]
V	Evolution of a Vestryman	[172]

BOOK FIFTH

I	Of Poetic Love: Treated with Poetic Inefficiency	[195]
II	Cross-Purposes in Spacious Times	[210]
III	Horvendile to Ettarre: at Whitehall	[217]
IV	Horvendile to Ettarre: at Vaux-le-Vicomte	[222]
V	Horvendile to Ettarre: in the Conciergerie	[226]
VI	Of One Enigma That Threatened to Prove Allegorical	[232]
VII	Treats of Witches, Mixed Drinks, and the Weather	[239]