1 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
 
 @fjn}t + ._____ - @0}tijrir$t If &♦. 
 Slaelf.___A.3L 
 
 TJNITED STATES. OF AMERICA. 
 
ROMANCES OF THE REIGN OF HENRI II. ; THE VALOIS 
 
 " ROMANCES; THE D'ARTAGNAN ROMANCES; THE 
 
 REGENCY ROMANCES; THE MARIE ANTOINETTE 
 
 ROMANCES; THE COUNT OF MONTE CR/STO.etc. 
 
 BY 
 
 ALEXANDRE DUMAS. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTES 
 
 LISTS OF CHARACTERS. 
 
 BOSTON: (*lll$~^ 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 
 
 1895. 
 
 k-. 
 

 Copyright, 1892, 1893, 189$, 
 By Little, Brown, and Company 
 
 University Press : 
 John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 The Two Dianas. Introductory Note ... 5 
 
 List of Characters 9 
 
 The Page of the Duke of Savoy. Introduc- 
 tory Note . . 13 
 
 List of Characters • • 17 
 
 Marguerite de Valois. Introductory Note . 21 
 
 List of Characters 27 
 
 La Dame de Monsoreau. Introductory Note . 29 
 
 List of Characters 33 
 
 The Forty-Five. Introductory Note .... 35 
 
 List of Characters 39 
 
 The Three Musketeers. Introductory Note . 41 
 
 List of Characters . . 51 
 
 Twenty Years After. Introductory Note . . 55 
 
 List of Characters 65 
 
 The Vicomte de Bragelonne. Introductory 
 
 Note 69 
 
 List of Characters 79 
 
 The Black Tulip. Introductory Note . . . 83 
 
 List of Characters 87 
 
 Le Chevalier D'Harmental. Introductory Note 89 
 
 List of Characters 99 
 
4 CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 The Regent's Daughter. Introductory Note 103 
 
 List of Characters Ill 
 
 Memoirs of a Physician. Introductory Note 115 
 
 List of Characters 131 
 
 The Queen's Necklace. Introductory Note . 135 
 
 List of Characters 155 
 
 Ange Pitou. Introductory Note 159 
 
 List of Characters 177 
 
 La Comtesse de Charny. Introductory Note . 181 
 
 List of Characters 199 
 
 The Chevalier de Maison-Rouge. Introduc- 
 tory Note 211 
 
 List of Characters 217 
 
 The Count of Monte Cristo. List of Char- 
 acters 219 
 
THE TWO DIANAS. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 The claim of Alexandre Dumas to be considered 
 first among historical romancists, past or present, can 
 hardly be disputed ; and his magic pen finds abun- 
 dant, rich material for the historical setting of the 
 tale told in the following pages. The period in which 
 the action of " The Two Dianas " is supposed to take 
 place, covers the later years of Henri II, and the 
 brief and melancholy reign of his oldest son, Fran- 
 cois II., the ill-fated husband of Mary Stuart, whose 
 later history has caused her brief occupancy of the 
 throne of France to be lost sight of. This period 
 saw the germination and early maturity, if not the 
 actual sowing, of the spirit of the Reformation in 
 France. It was during these years that the name 
 of John Calvin acquired the celebrity which has 
 never waned, and that his devoted followers, La 
 Renaudie, Theodore de Beze, Ambroise Pare', the 
 famous surgeon, and the immortal Coligny be- 
 gan the crusade for freedom of worship which 
 was steadily maintained, unchecked by Tumult of 
 Amboise, or Massacre of St. Bartholomew, until 
 
6 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 Henri of Navarre put the crown upon their heroic 
 labors, and gave them respite for a time with the 
 famous " Edict of Nantes," made more famous still 
 by its "^Revocation" a century later under the 
 auspices of Madame de Maintenon, at the instiga- 
 tion of her Jesuit allies. Those portions of the 
 story which introduce us to the councils of the Re- 
 formers are none the less interesting because the 
 characters introduced are actual historical person- 
 ages, nor can it fail to add interest to the encounter 
 between La Eenaudie and Pardaillan to know that 
 it really took place, and that the two men had 
 previously been to each other almost nearer than 
 brothers. It was but one of innumerable heart- 
 rending incidents, inseparable from all civil and 
 religious conflicts, but in which those presided over 
 by the Florentine mother of three Valois kings of 
 France were prolific beyond belief. 
 
 How closely the author has adhered to historical 
 fact for the groundwork of his tale, will appear by 
 comparing it with one of Balzac's Etudes Philoso- 
 phiques, entitled "Sur Catherine de Me'dicis," the 
 first part of which covers the same period as " The 
 Two Dianas," and describes many of the same 
 events; the variations are of the slightest. 
 
 The patient forbearance of Catherine de Me'dicis, 
 under the neglect of her husband, and the arrogant 
 presumption of Diane de Poitiers, abetted by the 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 7 
 
 Constable de Montmorency ; her swift and speedy 
 vengeance upon them as soon as she was left a 
 widow with her large brood of possible kings ; her 
 jealous fear of the influence of the Due de Guise 
 and his brother the Cardinal de Lorraine, which led 
 her to desire the death of her eldest son, the un- 
 fortunate Franqois, because his queen was the 
 niece of the powerful and ambitious brothers, and 
 which also led her to oppose their influence by a 
 combination with two such incongruous elements 
 as the Constable Montmorency and the Protestant 
 Bourbon princes of Navarre, remaining all the 
 while the bitterest foe that the reformed religion 
 ever had, — all these, as described in the following 
 pages, are strictly in conformity with historical fact. 
 So, too, is the story of the defence of St. Quentin 
 in its main details, and of the siege of Calais, 
 where the Due de Guise did receive the terrible 
 wound which caused the sobriquet of Le Balafre 
 to be applied to him, and was cured by the skilful 
 hand of Master Ambroise Pare. So of the Tumult 
 of Amboise, and the painful scenes attending the 
 execution of the victims; and so, finally, of the 
 scene at the death-bed of Francois II., the contro- 
 versy between the shrinking conservatism of the 
 King's regular medical advisers, and the daring 
 eclecticism of Pare, proposing to perform the " new 
 operation " of trepanning. It may, perhaps, be said 
 
8 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 that the Chancellor de l'Hopital is made to appear 
 in too unfavorable a light ; he certainly was some- 
 thing far above the mere bond-slave of Catherine de 
 Medicis. 
 
 Dumas himself tells us what basis of truth there 
 is for the sometimes amusing, sometimes serious, 
 but always intensely interesting confusion between 
 Martin-Guerre and his unscrupulous double. 
 
 Nowhere, it may be said, in history or romance, 
 is there to be found so touching a glimpse as this 
 of poor Mary Stuart. Here we see naught save the 
 lovely and lovable side of the unfortunate queen, 
 without a hint of the fatal weakness which, as it 
 developed in the stormy later years of her life, 
 made her marvellous beauty and charm the instru- 
 ments of her ruin. 
 
 So much for those portions of " The Two Dianas " 
 which rest upon a basis of fact. History records 
 further that Henri II. was accidentally killed in 
 friendly jousting by the Comte de Montgommery; 
 but with that history ends and romance begins. 
 The personage whom Monsieur Dumas presents to 
 us under that title perhaps never existed ; but let 
 the reader be the judge, after reading of the pure 
 and sacred but unhappy love of Gabriel de Mont- 
 gommery and Diane de Castro, if a lovelier gem of 
 fiction was ever enclosed in an historical setting. 
 
THE TWO DIANAS. 
 
 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 Period, 1521-1574. 
 
 Fbancois I., King of Trance. 
 
 Henri II., his successor. 
 
 Catherine de Medicis, Queen to Henri II. 
 
 The Dauphin, afterwards Francois II. 
 
 Henri, his brother, afterwards Henri III. 
 
 Mary Stuart, married to the Dauphin. 
 
 Mary, Queen of England. 
 
 Due d'Orleans, afterwards Charles IX. 
 
 Marguerite de France, sister of Henri II. 
 
 Marguerite de Valois, daughter of Henri II. 
 
 Princess Elisabeth. 
 
 Francois, Due d'Alencon. 
 
 Due de Guise, Lieutenant-General of France. 
 
 MONSEIGNEUR LE CARDINAL DE LORRAINE, his brother. 
 
 Due d'Aumale, brother of Due de Guise. 
 Marquis d'Elbcsuf, 
 
 officers of Due de Guise. 
 
 Marquis de Vaudemont, 
 
 Monsieur de Biron, 
 
 Monsieur de Thermes, 
 
 Constable Anne de Montmorency. 
 
 Francois de Montmorency, his son. 
 
 Antoine de Navarre. 
 
 Louis de Bourbon, Prince de Cond6, his brother. 
 
10 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 
 Philip II., of Spain. 
 Philibert Emmanuel, Due de Savoie. 
 Admiral Gaspard de Coligny. 
 Captain Oger, 
 
 French officers serv- 
 ing with the Admiral. 
 
 Monsieur de Lauxford, an engineer, 
 
 Monsieur de Rambouillet, 
 
 Monsieur de Breuil, 
 
 Baron de Vaulpergues, 
 
 Madame de Breze, Duehesse de Yalentinois, commonly called 
 
 Diane de Poitiers, mistress of Henri II. 
 Diane, Duehesse de Castro, afterwards Duehesse d'Angouleme, 
 
 daughter of Henri II. and Diane de Poitiers. 
 Madame de Leviston, in attendance on Diane de Castro. 
 Horace Farnese, Due de Castro. 
 Madame d'^tampes, mistress of Francois I. 
 Gabriel, Seigneur de Lorge, Vicomte de Montgommery, styling 
 
 himself Vicomte d'Exmes, in love with Diane de Castro. 
 Jacques, Comte de Montgommery, Gabriel's father, imprisoned 
 
 by Henri II. 
 Master Elyot, intendant of the County of Montgommery. 
 Perrot Travigny, squire to the Comte de Montgommery. 
 Martin-Guerre, Gabriel's squire. 
 Bertrande B-olles, wife of Martin-Guerre. 
 Aloyse, Gabriel's nurse. 
 
 Enguerrand Lorien, squire of the Counts of Vimoutiers. 
 Arnauld du Thill, Martin-Guerre's double, in the secret 
 
 service of Constable de Montmorency. 
 Monsieur de Boissy, Grand Equerry of France. 
 Monsieur de Salvoison, governor of the Chatelet Prison. 
 Monsieur de Sazerac, his successor. 
 Monsieur de Langeais, ^ 
 Monsieur de Boutieres, 
 Comte de Sancerre, I gentlemen of the Court of Fran- 
 Monsieur d'Aussun, f cois I. 
 
 Monsieur d'Enghien, 
 Comte de Montausier, 
 
of the King's council. 
 
 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 11 
 
 Monsieur de Vieilleville, i 
 
 Monsieur le Colonel-General de Bonnivet, 
 Gaspard de Tavannes, I gentlemen of 
 
 COMTE DE POMMERIVE, j the C ° Urt ° f 
 
 Marechal d'Anville, Henri II. 
 
 Monsieur de Buri, J 
 
 President Bertrand, 
 Chancellor Olivier de Lenville, 
 
 CoMTE D'AUMALE, 
 
 Monsieur de Sedan, 
 Monsieur de Humieres, 
 Monsieur de Saint-Andre, 
 
 COMTE DE SaINT-ReMY, 
 
 Richelieu, captain of arquebusiers. 
 
 Monsieur d'Avallon, captain of the guards of Henri II. 
 
 Jacques Amyot, the preceptor of the princes. 
 
 Lady Lennox, 1 ... 
 
 .. .. _ V governesses ot the princesses. 
 
 Madame de Coni, J ° 
 
 Madame Dayelle, lady-in-waiting to Mary Stuart. 
 
 Nicolas Duval, a councillor of Parliament. 
 
 T _ _. , _ T 1 knights in the tourna- 
 
 Jacques de Savoie, Due de Nemours, ° , . . „ 
 
 , >T , ' , -n V ment at which Henri 
 
 Alphonse d Este, Due de lerrara, j TT , .,, , 
 
 J II. was killed. 
 
 Ambroise Pare, surgeon. 
 
 Chancellor de l'Hopital. 
 
 Brantome, historian. 
 
 Antoine de Baif, dramatic writer. 
 
 Remy Belleau, a poet. 
 
 Marechal Pierre Strozzi, an engineer of the sixteenth 
 
 century. 
 
 Plorimond, an usher at the Prench court. 
 
 -^ , ' ]■ waiting-maids to Diane de Castro. 
 
 Denise, J d 
 
 Nostradamus, astrologer and physician. 
 
 John Calvin. 
 
 Theodore de Beze, historian of the Reformed Church. 
 
 Baron de la Renaudie, a Huguenot officer. 
 
12 
 
 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 
 condemned Calviuists. 
 
 Baron de Pardaillan, an officer of the king's troops, 
 
 David, a Calvinistic minister. 
 
 Des Avenelles, advocate, a traitor to the Calvinists. 
 
 Baron Castelnau de Chalosses,^ 
 
 comte de vlllemangis, 
 
 comte de mazeres, 
 
 Baron de Raunay, , 
 
 Monsieur de Braguelonne, Lieutenant of Police. 
 
 Master Arpion, his secretary. 
 
 Lignieres, an agent of police. 
 
 Antoine de Motjchy, otherwise styled Demochares, Doctor of 
 
 the Sorbonne and Canon of Noyon, Grand Inquisitor of the 
 
 Faith in Prance. 
 Jean Peuqtjoy, syndic of the weavers of St. Quentin. 
 Pierre Peuquoy, an armorer. 
 Babette, Pierre Peuquoy's sister. 
 Lord Wentworth, Governor of Calais, 
 Lord Grey, his brother-in-law, commanding the English archers. 
 Lord Derby, an English officer. 
 Sir Edward Pleming, herald of England. 
 Anselme, a fisherman. 
 Andre, a page. 
 Sister Monique, Superior of the Benedictine convent at St. 
 
 Quentin. 
 Heinrich Scharfenstein, ^ 
 
 PlLLETROTJSE, 
 
 Prantz Scharfenstein, 
 
 Malemort, 
 
 Lactance, 
 
 YVONNET, 
 
 Ambrosio, 
 Landry, 
 
 1 veterans of the war in Lorraine, entering the ser- 
 
 „ * j vice of Vicomte d'Exmes. 
 
 contamine, 
 
 Balu, 
 
 . officers and soldiers in Gabriel's 
 
THE 
 
 PAGE OF THE DUKE OF SAVOY. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 In " The Page of the Duke of Savoy " we meet again 
 most of the members of the doughty band of adven- 
 turers with whom Gabriel de Montgomery is said 
 in the "Two Dianas" to have accomplished the 
 marvellous feat of carrying the Old Fort of Calais 
 by escalade: Malemort, the seamed and scarred 
 hero of a hundred fights, whose first rush was 
 always so impetuous and reckless that he inevit- 
 ably received a fresh wound at the very beginning, 
 and was incapacitated for further service ; Yvonnet 
 the dandy, bold as a lion by daylight, and timid as 
 a hare when the sun had gone down ; Pilletrousse, 
 the rifler of dead men's pockets ; Lactance, whose 
 excessive blood-thirstiness was only equalled by 
 his devoutness ; and the two Scharfensteins, uncle 
 and nephew, whose feats of strength out-Hercules 
 Hercules. Procope, Maldent, and Fracasso are new 
 acquaintances, equally diverting, each in his par- 
 ticular line. 
 
14 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 The period of this tale was crowded with events 
 of deepest import to the world's history: it em- 
 braced the culmination of the world-empire of 
 Charles V. and his abdication; the early years of 
 the reign of Philip II., in which his future policy 
 and conduct were so clearly foreshadowed ; the 
 struggle for supremacy between the Guises and 
 Catherine de Me'dicis, the Florentine mother of the 
 last three Valois Kings of France ; and the irre- 
 sistible growth and spread of the Eeformation. 
 
 Of all the famous men who fought and governed 
 in that age, perhaps the very noblest was Emman- 
 uel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, whom Dumas selected 
 as the central figure of his story. All that is here 
 told us of him and his character is amply supported 
 by authority. 
 
 Many of the historical events woven into the 
 plot of the "Two Dianas " are here presented to us 
 again, mainly in forms which follow the chronicles 
 more closely. This is especially true of the life of 
 the Comte de Montgomery, and the circumstances 
 attending the fatal disaster at the Tournelles. 
 There is no reason to believe that the death of 
 Henri II. was the result of anything but pure acci- 
 dent, nor has history any more to say of the Comte 
 de Montgomery than is said by our author in the 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 15 
 
 following pages. It will be noticed, however, that 
 the gloomy prognostications of Nostradamus re- 
 appear here in slightly different form. 
 
 As to the siege of Saint Quentin, too, the de- 
 scription given in the present work is entitled to 
 the credit of being more nearly in accord with the 
 facts than that which omits to mention Dandelot's 
 presence, and makes Gaspard de Coligny play a 
 subordinate part to Gabriel de Montgomery. It 
 was the failure of Philip II. to follow up the fall of 
 the town (inexplicable unless it was due to his 
 jealousy of the Duke of Savoy) which saved Paris, 
 and not the defence made by the garrison and citi- 
 zens, heroic and devoted as their conduct was. 
 
 It would be perhaps more accurate to entitle 
 "The Page of the Duke of Savoy" a part of the 
 romance of history than an historical romance ; for 
 aside from the scenes in which the exploits of Pro- 
 cope and his associates appear, and the deeply 
 touching love episode of Emmanuel Philibert and 
 his pseudo-page, there are few chapters of which the 
 historical accuracy can be impugned, — from the 
 famous scene at Brussels when Charles V. laid 
 down his sceptre, to his mock obsequies at the 
 little convent in Spain ; from Henri II. haughtily 
 receiving the heralds of Spain and England, to 
 
16 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 Henri II. meekly consenting to the shameful treaty 
 of Cateau-Cambresis ; from the brilliant pageant 
 and superb jousting in the lists at the Tournelles, 
 to the chamber of death, with Catherine de Mddicis 
 hovering jealously about the bed of the dying king, 
 who had been so long and consistently unfaithful 
 to her. 
 
 The epoch is one which readily lends itself to 
 the romantic treatment, and under the hand of the 
 master few opportunities of arousing the interest 
 and moving the heart of the reader have been lost. 
 
THE 
 
 PAGE OF THE DUKE OF SAVOY. 
 
 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 
 Period, 1528-1580. 
 
 The Emperor, Charles V. 
 
 Mary of Austria, the Queen Dowager of Hungary, sister of 
 
 Charles Y. 
 Mary, Queen of England. 
 
 Philip, Prince of Spain, her husband, son of Charles V. 
 Queen Eleanor, sister of Charles Y. 
 Don Carlos, the Emperor's grandson. 
 Emmanuel Philibert, Due de Savoie, surnamed Tete de Fer, 
 
 nephew of Charles Y. 
 Scianca-Eerro, his squire. 
 Gaetano, his major-domo. 
 
 Charles the Good, of Portugal, father of Emmanuel Philibert. 
 Beatrice of Portugal, Emmanuel Philibert's mother. 
 Leona Maraviglia, passing as Leone, the page of the Duke 
 
 of Savoy. 
 Comte Erancesco Maraviglia, her father. 
 La Comtesse Maraviglia. 
 Comte Odoardo Maraviglia, Leona's brother, Ambassador of 
 
 the Kings of Erance and Spain. 
 John Frederick, Elector of Saxony. 
 Admiral of Castile, "\ 
 Duke of Medina Coeli, 
 Ruy Gomez de Silva, 
 Duke of Alva, 
 Don Luis de Yargas, 
 
 Spanish noblemen. 
 
18 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 
 Francesco Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan. 
 
 Archbishop of Toledo. 
 
 Cardinal Pole. 
 
 "William of Orange. 
 
 Don Guzman d'Avila, Herald of Spain. 
 
 Signor Angelo Policastro, Astrologer to Charles V. 
 
 Comte Waldeck, in the cavalry service of Charles V. 
 
 Vicomte Waldeck, his son. 
 
 The Bastard Son of Comte Waldeck. 
 
 Odinet de Montfort, a Savoyard cavalier. 
 
 Councillor Philibert Brusselius. 
 
 Francois I., King of France. 
 
 Henri IP, his successor. 
 
 Catherine de Medicis, 
 
 Diane de Poitiers. 
 
 Diane de Castro. 
 
 Marguerite de France, sister of Henri II. 
 
 The Dauphin, afterwards Francois II. 
 
 Mary Stuart, married to the Dauphin. 
 
 Mary Fleming, 
 
 Mary Seaton, I M stuart>s (i Four Marys> „ 
 
 Mary Livingston, 
 
 Mary Beaton, 
 
 Elizabeth de Valois, ) d bters of Henri IL 
 
 Marguerite de Valois, ) 
 
 Due d'Orleans, afterwards Charles IX. 
 
 Due de Nevers, Lieutenant-general of the king. 
 
 Henri, his brother, afterwards Henri III. 
 
 Constable de Montmorency. 
 
 Gabriel de Montmorency, his son. 
 
 Monsieur de Chatillon, the Constable's nephew. 
 
 Francois, Due de Guise. 
 
 Cardinal de Lorraine, 
 
 DUC D'AUMALE, [ his brothers . 
 
 Marquis d'Elbceuf, 
 Cardinal Guise. 
 
LIST OF CHAEACTEES. 
 
 19 
 
 surgeons. 
 
 men of letters at the French Court. 
 
 Admiral Coligny, Envoy extraordinary of Henri II 
 Monsieur Dandelot de Coligny, his brother. 
 Monsieur de Boissy, Grand Equerry of France. 
 Monsieur de Vieilleville, Grand Chamberlain. 
 Alphonse d'Este, Due de Ferrara. 
 duchesse de nemours. 
 Cardinal Caraffa. 
 Gabriel de Lorges, 
 Ambroise Pare, ) 
 Andrew Yesalius, j 
 
 RONSARD, 
 REMY BeLLEAU, 
 DORAT, 
 
 Du Bellay, 
 
 Jacques Amyot, ) tor3 of the iuces 
 
 M. Danesius, ) 
 
 Jacques de la Motte, Abbe de St. Prix. 
 
 Due d'Enghien, 
 
 Marechal de Saint-Andre, 
 
 Due de Nevers, 
 
 Marechal Strozzi, 
 
 Marechal de Brissac, 
 
 Monsieur de Tiielignt, 
 
 Monsieur de Breuil, 
 
 Monsieur de Jarnac, 
 
 Captain Languetot, 
 
 Captain Rambouillet, 
 
 Captain Louis Poy, 
 
 Monsieur Dandelot, the admiral's brother, 
 
 Vicomte du Mont Notre-Dame, 
 
 Sieur de la Curee, 
 
 comte de la rochefoucauld, 
 
 Due de Montpensier, 
 
 Due de Longueville, 
 
 Due de Bouillon, 
 
 Vicomte de Turenne, 
 
 French officers. 
 
20 
 
 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 
 soldiers of fortune in the 
 French service. 
 
 Heinrich Scharfenstein, 
 
 Martin Pilletrouse, 
 
 Frantz Scharfenstein, 
 
 Caesar Annibal Malemort, 
 
 Honore-Joseph Maldent, 
 
 Jean-Chrysostome Procope, 
 
 Victor-Felix Yvonnet, 
 
 Cyrille-Nepomucene Lactance, 
 
 Vittorio-Albani Fracasso, 
 
 Count Egmont, 
 
 Count Horn, 
 
 Count Schwarzbourg, 
 
 Count Mansfield, 
 
 Duke Eric of Brunswick, 
 
 Duke Ernest of Brunswick, 
 
 Field-Marshal de Binnscourt, 
 
 Captain Carondelet, 
 
 Colonel Narvaez, 
 
 Julian Romeron, 
 
 Alonzo de Cazieres, 
 
 Mademoiselle Gertrude, ) ^^ ftt the CMteau du Parcqe 
 
 Philippin, ) 
 
 Jean Pauquet, captain of a company at St. Quentin. 
 
 Guillaume Pauquet, his brother. 
 
 Gudule, Guillaume Pauquet's daughter. 
 
 Maitre Gosseu, a Picard peasant. 
 
 Catherine, his wife. 
 
 officers in the army besieg- 
 ing St. Quentin. 
 
MAEGUEEITE DE VALOIS. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 The series of romances in which Dumas has dealt 
 with the courts of the later Valois kings, Charles 
 IX. and Henri III., — a series of which "La Reine 
 Margot," or "Marguerite de Valois," is the first 
 chronologically speaking, — describes the main 
 events of the period with such substantial accuracy 
 that one who reads this great trilogy may be fairly 
 said to be studying French history, if not perhaps 
 preparing himself to write it. 
 
 From the death of Henri II. through the reigns 
 of the three sons of that unhappy monarch, — the 
 sickly and ill-fated Franqois II., the cruel, almost 
 insane, Charles IX., and the effeminate, irresolute, 
 and cowardly Henri III., — the one pervading per- 
 sonality in France was that of Catherine de Me'dicis ; 
 and as her hatred and fear of Henri of Navarre 
 was the mainspring of her policy from the time 
 that his character became so developed as to distin- 
 guish him from the other princes of the Bourbon 
 family, all of whom were adherents of the re- 
 
22 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 formed religion, and to attract to him the warm 
 and enthusiastic devotion of the constantly increas- 
 ing Huguenot party, so has Dumas taken that 
 hatred and that fear for the theme upon which he 
 has constructed three romances which rival, in in- 
 tense interest and power to entertain and amuse, 
 any that have ever come even from his pen. 
 
 If it was from the lips of Charles that the order 
 for the bloody work of St. Bartholomew's Day, 
 1572, issued, it was the mind of the queen mother 
 that prompted it, and the will of the queen mother 
 that forced it from those lips ; and the vast num- 
 bers of Huguenots that were massacred in the 
 streets of Paris in pursuance of that order were 
 sacrificed pitilessly and ruthlessly in the hope that 
 in the general carnage the king of Navarre would 
 be put out of the way with his co-religionists. 
 
 The assassination of Gaspard de Coligny, the 
 brave Admiral, whose services to France had been 
 so great, can never cease to be an event of sad and 
 mournful interest to all lovers of religious liberty ; 
 and the vivid description of the foul deed to be 
 found in the following pages derives added interest 
 from the fact that the part therein assigned to 
 Coconnas was really performed by him. 
 
 M. De Crue has recently published in Paris a 
 book entitled, "Ze Parti des Politiques au lendemain 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 23 
 
 de la Saint-Barthelemy" and which has for its sub- 
 title, "La Molle et Coconat" which it seems is in 
 each instance the more authentic orthography. 
 
 It appears from the researches of M. de Crue that 
 our two heroes were even more important person- 
 ages than they are represented by Dumas to have 
 been. The party of the Politiques occupied a sort 
 of middle position between the Catholics and 
 Huguenots ; it was originally headed by the Mont- 
 morencys, and after them by Francois, Due d'Alen- 
 c^on. La Molle, described as dissolute, pious, very 
 superstitious, became the confidant of d'Alenqon ; 
 and it is said that Charles IX., who detested his 
 brother, twice gave the order to strangle La Molle ; 
 and that one day he himself, with the Due de Guise 
 and other gentlemen, waited in a passage at the 
 Louvre for that purpose. La Molle was saved only 
 because he entered the room of the Queen of 
 Navarre instead of d'Alenqon's. 
 
 Annibal Coconat (or Coconata) is said by M. 
 De Crue to have been taken as an associate by 
 La Molle to supply personal courage, in which he 
 was lacking. They were both secret agents of 
 Spain, which power was under Philip II. always 
 industriously fomenting the religious troubles in 
 France. Charles IX. is quoted as having spoken of 
 Coconat thus : " Coconat was a valiant gentleman. 
 
24 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 but he was wicked; he was one of the wickedest 
 men living in my kingdom. I remember having 
 heard him say, among other things, when he vaunted 
 his part in the Saint Bartholomew, that he had 
 bought from the hands of the people thirty Hugue- 
 nots in order to have the satisfaction of killing 
 them after his own pleasure, which was, first to 
 make them renounce their religion with a promise 
 to save their lives; this being done, he killed them 
 with his poniard cruelly with several cuts." 
 
 This monarch, who was horrified at such "wick- 
 edness " and " cruelty," is the same who stood at 
 the window of the Louvre on the same occasion, 
 shooting at passing Huguenots with his arquebus. 
 In 1574 a scheme was formed (by La Molle ?) 
 which provided that d'AlenQon was to fly from 
 Paris with the King of Navarre, Turenne, and 
 Coconat, and put himself at the head of all the 
 malcontents of the kingdom, the expectation being 
 that Ludwig of Nassau and his army would support 
 him, as well as England, Germany, and the Nether- 
 lands. The spies of the queen mother, however, 
 ferreted out the plot. D'Alengon and the King of 
 Navarre were kept prisoners in the Louvre, while 
 La Molle and Coconat were arrested. The first was 
 looked upon as the head of the conspiracy, Coconat 
 merely as an instrument. They were both put to 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 25 
 
 the torture. La Molle, after keeping silent for a 
 long while, finally denounced as his accomplices 
 Turenne, Coconat, Bouillon, Conde\ and others, but 
 did not breathe the name of D'AlenQon. Coconat, 
 however, did speak, under torture, of D'Alenc,on 
 and Montmorency. 
 
 La Molle was the lover of the Queen of Navarre ; 
 the Duchesse de Nevers was one of Coconat's many 
 mistresses. Marguerite pleaded for La Molle's par- 
 don, but could only obtain a promise that he should 
 not have a public execution ; but the preparations 
 were hastened, and before the order arrived they 
 were both beheaded in the Place de Greve. 
 
 Brautome says that Marguerite and the Duch- 
 esse de Nevers secretly disinterred the bodies, and 
 had them buried in the Chapel of Saint Martin at 
 Montmartre. It was said also that they kept the 
 heads of their lovers embalmed. 
 
 A poet of the time composed this epigram for 
 La Molle: "Mollis vita fuit, mollior interitus." 
 
 This brief sketch of the results of historical 
 research will enable the reader to judge for himself 
 how closely Dumas has adhered to fact. 
 
 History has had much to say of Marguerite de 
 Valois, Queen of Navarre, — of her fatal beauty 
 and her even more fatal levity of character, to call 
 it by no harsher name. Dumas has certainly pre- 
 
26 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 sented her to us here in quite as favorable a light 
 as the known facts of her life and character war- 
 rant. Our own historian, Motley, has had a word 
 to say of her when telling the story of her brother 
 Francois's brief experience as Governor-General of 
 the Netherlands. Her relations with that brother 
 have been commented upon very severely; she 
 accompanied him to the Netherlands, where she 
 added many names to the list of those whom her 
 charms had seduced, — notably that of Don John 
 of Austria, the hero of Lepanto. 
 
 It would be difficult, indeed, to imagine a tale 
 otherwise than interesting which should have for 
 its central figure, or for one of its central figures, the 
 jovial, insouciant, captivating, lovable, but withal 
 shrewd and calculating, Henri de Bourbon, King of 
 Navarre, afterwards Henri IV. of France. Always 
 present, a gay and mocking spectre in the minds of 
 Catherine de Mddicis and her childless sons, un- 
 stable in love and in religion, but always manly 
 and brave, generous and loyal, the son of Jeanne 
 d'Albret is the true hero of the Yalois Eomances. 
 
MARGUERITE DE VALOIS. 
 
 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 
 Period, 1572-1575. 
 
 Charles IX., King of France. 
 
 Henri, Due d'Anjou, j ^ brothers> 
 
 Francois, Due d Alenpon, ) 
 
 Catherine de Medicis, the. Queen Mother. 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen to Charles IX. 
 
 Henri de Bourbon, King of Navarre, afterwards Henri IV. 
 
 Marguerite de Valois, his wife. 
 
 Princess Claude, Duchesse de Lorraine, sister of Marguerite 
 
 de Valois. 
 Marie Touchet, mistress of Charles IX. 
 Charles, their infant son, afterwards Due d'Angouleme, 
 Henri de Lorraine, Due de Guise. 
 Duchesse de Nevers, his sister-in-law. 
 Baron de Sauve. 
 Madame de Sauve, his wife, lady-in-waiting to Catherine de 
 
 Medicis. 
 Mademoiselle Dariole, her waiting-woman. 
 Gilonne, daughter of Marshal de Matignon, and confidante of 
 
 Marguerite de Valois. 
 Madelon, the old nurse of Charles IX. 
 Comte Joseph Hyacinthe Boniface de Lerac de la Mole, 
 
 a Huguenot, beloved by Marguerite de Valois. 
 Comte Annibal de Coconnas, a Catholic, beloved by the 
 
 Duchesse de Nevers. 
 
28 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 
 Maitre Cabouche, headsman to the provostry of Paris. 
 Francois de Louviers-Maurevel, " the King's Killer." 
 Maitre Rene, Florentine, " perfumer to her Majesty the Queen 
 
 Mother." 
 Ambroise Pare, surgeon. 
 
 M. de Nancey, Captain of the Guards to Catherine de Medicis. 
 Maitre la Huriere, a Catholic, landlord of the Belle Iitoile Inn. 
 Gregoire, his servant. 
 Madame la Huriere. 
 
 M. de Besme, a German officer, and adherent to the Due de Guise. 
 Orthon, page to Henry of Navarre. 
 M. de Beaulieu, Governor of Vincennes. 
 Captain la Chastro, of the King's Guards. 
 Bishop of Cracow, j Ambassadors from PoIand . 
 The Palatine Lasco, ) 
 Admiral de Coligny, 
 Prince de Conde, 
 M. de Teligny, 
 
 M. DE MOUY. DE SAINT-PHALE, 
 
 M. de Sancourt, > Huguenots. 
 
 M. de Barthelemy, 
 
 Lambert Mercandon, 
 
 Olivier, his son. 
 
 Madame de Mercandon, 
 
 Le Procureur-General. 
 
 President of the Court at Vincennes- 
 
 Clerk or the Court. 
 
 Mazille, a physician. 
 
LA DAME DE MONSOREAU. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 In "La Dame de Monsoreau," we find Henri III., 
 the third son of Henri II., occupying the throne of 
 France. He it was who, as Due d'Anjou, was 
 chosen King of Poland, — as related in " Mar- 
 guerite de Valois," — and who returned to Paris so 
 opportunely as Charles IX. was breathing his last, 
 summoned by Catherine de Me'dicis, whose favorite 
 son he was. We find him, last and weakest of the 
 Yalois, surrounded and ruled by unworthy favor- 
 ites, the famous "Mignons;" and much less king 
 in fact than any one of half a dozen others. 
 
 The Catholic League has grown in numbers and 
 in audacity, and the Guises find a willing tool in 
 the king's brother, Francois, Due d'Anjou, formerly 
 Due d'Alengon, now, as always, ready to commit 
 any treachery and enter into any agreement which 
 looks to the placing of a crown on his head. 
 
 The various scenes in the Abbey of Sainte- 
 Genevieve will be to many readers among the 
 most engrossing, from their historical interest as 
 well as from the prominent part taken in them 
 
30 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 by the inimitable Chicot, the court "jester." If 
 Dumas had done nothing else to earn our gratitude, 
 it would certainly be due to him in large measure 
 for enabling us to make the acquaintance of Chicot, 
 whose " jesting " served his master far better than 
 the selfish devotion of all his "Mignons." Never 
 was a character in history or romance farther re- 
 moved from the common conception of a court 
 fool; and while he is responsible for some of the 
 most amusing and entertaining chapters that were 
 ever written, he takes no step, indeed scarce utters 
 a word, which has not a definite purpose connected 
 with the interests of the king, whose only true 
 friend he seems to be ; while at the same time 
 he sees him as he is, in all his weakness and 
 effeminacy, and estimates him at his true value. 
 Whether he is engaged in drinking Gorenflot under 
 the table, belaboring the Due de Mayenne while 
 he vainly struggles to crawl through a hole too 
 small for his famous paunch, or fighting his other 
 old enemy, the lawyer Nicolas David, to the death, 
 he is always the same Chicot, — cool, shrewd, per- 
 fectly self-possessed, brave as a lion, and with an 
 inexhaustible store of good-humored persiflage and 
 biting wit. 
 
 "The passions in your tales," says Andrew Lang, 
 in "Letters to Dead Authors," "are honorable and 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 31 
 
 brave ; the motives are clearly human. Honor, love, 
 friendship make the threefold clew your knights 
 and dames follow through how delightful a laby- 
 rinth of adventures ! " 
 
 How fitly do these words apply to those portions 
 of " La Dame de Monsoreau " which are concerned 
 with the passion aroused by Diane de Mdridor in 
 the heart of that hero of herees, Comte Louis de 
 Clermont, called Bussy d'Amboise, and with the 
 fatal result of that passion, contributed to by the 
 jealousy of Monsoreau, the cowardice of d'Epernon, 
 and the inborn, motiveless wickedness of that most 
 contemptible of all characters in French history, 
 Francois de Yalois, Due d'Anjou ! 
 
 The heroic defence of Bussy d'Amboise against 
 the combined attack of Monsoreau and his band of 
 ruffians and the cut-throats in the pay of d'Epernon 
 long ago took its place at the head of the master- 
 pieces of description in its kind. 
 
 Says Mr. Lang, in the same letter quoted from 
 above : " I know four good fights of one against a 
 multitude in literature. These are the Death of 
 Gretir the Strong, the Death of Gunnar of Lithend, 
 the Death of Hereward the Wake, and the Death 
 of Bussy d'Amboise. We can compare the strokes 
 of the heroic fighting times with those described in 
 later days ; and upon my word, I do not know that 
 
32 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 the short sword of Gretir or the bill of Skarphedin 
 or the bow of Gunnar was better wielded than the 
 rapier of your Bussy or the sword and shield of 
 Hereward." 
 
 But in our admiration of the magnificent swords- 
 manship, the superb coolness, and the heroic courage 
 of the central figure, we must not overlook the 
 other elements which add to the power of the 
 description and the tense and thrilling interest of 
 the scene, — on the one hand, the unselfish devotion 
 of Ee*my and the heart-broken despair of Diane ; 
 on the other hand, the cold-blooded heartlessness 
 and cynicism of d'Anjou, the real instigator of the 
 plot against his popular and powerful — indeed, too 
 powerful — follower. 
 
 Diane lived ! Her love for Bussy d'Amboise was 
 the undying passion of a noble-hearted woman who 
 loves but once ; she lived to avenge the murder of 
 her lover upon the head of the royal assassin. In 
 " The Forty-Five," the third and last of the Valois 
 cycle of romances, Dumas has followed and de- 
 scribed the course of her vengeance to its fearful 
 end. 
 
LA DAME DE MONSOREAIL 
 
 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 Period, 1578. 
 
 Henri III., King of France. 
 
 Francois, Due d'Anjou, his brother, formerly Due d'Alenpon. 
 
 Aurilly, a lute-player, the confidant of Due d'Anjou. 
 
 Louise de Lorraine, wife of Henri III. 
 
 Catherine de Medicis, the Queen Mother. 
 
 Chicot, the King's jester, a Gascon gentleman. 
 
 Henri de Bourbon, King of Navarre. 
 
 Mademoiselle de Montmorency, " la Fosseuse," his mistress 
 
 M. Agrippa d'Aubigne, his friend. 
 
 Comte Louis de Clermont, called Bussy d'Amboise. 
 
 M. Charles Balzac d'Antragues, 1 friends of B 
 
 Francois d'Audie, Vicomte de Bibeirae, J- 1, * 1 • 
 
 M. DE LlVAROT, J 
 
 Francois d'Epinay de Saint-Luc, favorite of Henri III. 
 
 Jeanne de Cosse, his wife. 
 
 Marechal de Brissac, her father. 
 
 M. Bryan de Monsoreau, chief huntsman. 
 
 Diane de Meridor, his wife, "La Dame de Monsoreau," in 
 
 love witli Bussy d'Amboise. 
 Baron de Meridor, Diane's father. 
 Bemy le Haudouin, a young surgeon. 
 Gertrude, Diane's servant. 
 M. d'Epernon, 
 
 M. DE SCHOMBEEG, 
 
 M. de Maugiron, 
 
 Jacques de Levis, Comte de Quelus, 
 
34 
 
 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 
 Leaguers, conspiring 
 against Henri III. 
 
 M. de Crillon, an officer of the king. 
 
 Henri, Due de Guise, 
 
 Cardinal de Lorraine, 
 
 Due de Mayenne, 
 
 Duchesse de Montpensier, his sister, 
 
 Maitre Nicolas David, an advocate, 
 
 M. Pierre de Gondy, 
 
 M. LE GOUVERNEUR D'AUNIS, 
 
 M. de Castillon, 
 
 Baron de Lusignan, 
 
 M. Cruce, 
 
 M. Leclerc, 
 
 Chancellor de Morvilliers. 
 
 M. de Nancey, Captain of the Guards. 
 
 Joseph Foulon, superior of the Convent of Sainte Genevieve. 
 
 Claude Bonhomet, host of the " Corne d'Abondance." 
 
 M. Bernouillet, of the hostelry of La Croix. 
 
 Maitre la Huriere, of the Belle litoile Inn. 
 
 Brother Gorenflot. 
 
THE FORTY-FIVE. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 Some six or seven years elapsed between the tragical 
 death of Bussy d'Amboise, as told in the concluding 
 chapters of " La Dame de Monsoreau," and the 
 coming to Paris of the famous Gascon body-guard 
 of Henri III., known in history as the Forty-Five, 
 with which this tale opens. 
 
 The vengeance wrought by Diane de Meridor 
 upon the prince, who was the instigator of the 
 concerted attack upon Bussy, is the theme from 
 which the " Forty-Five " derives most of its ro- 
 mantic interest. Diane, the lovely, lovable, loving 
 woman, has become a cold, loveless, pitiless statue, 
 living only to avenge her murdered lover; but 
 she is still beautiful, almost superhumanly beauti- 
 ful, — so beautiful that Henri de Joyeuse is lost 
 in hopeless love of her, and that the perfidious Due 
 d'Anjou, the object of her relentless pursuit, thirsts 
 to possess her, and by his very passion makes her 
 
36 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 task easy. History records that he died, from an 
 ■unexplained cause, at Chateau-Thierry on the date 
 here assigned. 
 
 The acquaintance so pleasantly begun in the 
 earlier story, with Chicot, is here renewed with 
 even greater delight. Disguised as Maitre Eobert 
 Briquet, to escape the vengeance of the Due de 
 Mayenne, he is no less original and amusing than 
 in his proper person, — no less active in his care for 
 the interests of the somewhat unappreciative and 
 ungrateful master, to whom his faithful attachment 
 never varies. 
 
 The whole episode of the jester's mission to the 
 Court of Navarre — his hazardous journey, his brief 
 stay at Nerac, the " hunt " which ended at Cahors, 
 and his narration of his experiences to the king on 
 his return — would alone be sufficient to stamp the 
 "Forty-Five " as one of the very best of our author's 
 romances. In all his varied experiences, Chicot 
 never found his match in shrewdness and finesse 
 till he crossed swords with Henri of Navarre. And 
 how frankly he acknowledged his defeat, and how 
 warmly each appreciated the other's merits! 
 
 The events which led to the journey of the Due 
 d'Anjou to Flanders with the hope of wearing a 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 37 
 
 crown at last, the course of William of Orange 
 towards the French prince, and the abortive attempt 
 upon Antwerp, are sufficiently touched upon in the 
 body of the story. Francois, after all his longing 
 and scheming, died uncrowned ; and it may be 
 doubted whether he would ever have ascended the 
 French throne, even if he had outlived his brother. 
 Had he done so, it is safe to say that the crimes 
 and shortcomings of his brothers would have been 
 almost forgotten, and the odium which attaches to 
 the memory of the last degenerate Yalois kings 
 would have been concentrated upon him. 
 
 The constant growth of the Holy League under 
 the leadership of the Guises, and with the almost 
 avowed patronage of Philip II. of Spain, is interest- 
 ingly woven into the narrative ; perhaps we need 
 not marvel at the success of a cause which had for 
 its high priestess so charming a personality as the 
 heroine of the celebrated golden scissors, — that ener- 
 getic intrigante, the clever and fascinating Duchesse 
 de Montpensier. 
 
 It is interesting to know the estimation in which 
 these romances were held by their author's com- 
 patriot, George Sand, herself a novelist of the first 
 rank. 
 
38 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 Says Andrew Lang in his "Essays in Little:" 
 " M. Borie chanced to visit the famous novelist just 
 before her death, and found Dumas's novel, 'Les 
 Quarante-Cinq,' lying on her table. He expressed 
 his wonder that she was reading it for the first 
 time. ' For the first time ! ' said she ; ' why, this is 
 the fifth or sixth time I have read " Les Quarante- 
 Cinq" and the others. When I am ill, anxious, 
 melancholy, tired, discouraged, nothing helps me 
 against moral and physical troubles like a book of 
 Dumas.' " 
 
THE FORTY-FIVE, 
 
 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 Period, 1585. 
 
 Henri ill., King of France. 
 
 Louise de Lorraine, his wife. 
 
 Francois, Due d'Anjou, brother of Henri III. 
 
 Aurilly, the confidant of Due d'Anjou. 
 
 Catherine de Medicis, the Queen Mother. 
 
 Chicot, the King's jester, passing under the name of Robert 
 
 Briquet. 
 Anne, Due de Joyeuse, Grand Admiral of France. 
 Henri de Joyeuse, Comte du Bouchage, ) j. w-jHjg-- 
 Francois, Cardinal de Joyeuse, ) 
 
 Nogaret de Lavalette, Due d'J^pemon. 
 
 COMTE DE SAINT-AlGNAN. 
 
 M. de Loignac, Captain of the Forty-Five Guardsmen. 
 
 VlCOMTE ErNATJTON DE CaRMAINGES, ^ 
 
 M. de Sainte-Malinb, 
 
 M. de Chalabre, 
 
 Percudas de Pincornat, 
 
 Pertinax de Montcrabeau, 
 
 Eustache de Miradoux, 
 
 Hector de Biran, 
 
 M. de Crillon, Colonel of the French Guards. 
 
 M. de Vesin, commanding the garrison at Cahors. 
 
 Diane de Meridor. 
 
 Remy le Haudouin. 
 
 The Superior of the Convent of the Hospitalieres. 
 
 of the " Forty-Five. 
 
40 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 
 Henri, Due de Guise, 
 
 Due de Mayenne, 
 
 Duchesse de Montpensier, his sister, 
 
 M. de Mayneville, 
 
 M. de Cruce, V Leaguers. 
 
 Bussy-Leclerc, 
 
 M. de Marteau, 
 
 Nicolas Poulain, lieutenant to the 
 
 provost of Paris, 
 President Brisson of the Council. 
 M. de Salcede. 
 
 Henri de Bourbon, King of Navarre. 
 Marguerite, his wife. 
 
 M. DE TURENNE, 1 
 
 M. D'Aubiac, j- of the Court of Navarre. 
 
 M. DUPLESSIS-DE MORNAY, J 
 
 Mademoiselle de Montmorency, " la Fosseuse," mistress of 
 
 the King of Navarre. 
 William of Nassau, Prince of Orange. 
 The Burgomaster of Antwerp. 
 Goes, a "Flemish sailor. 
 Dom Modeste Gorenflot, 
 Brother Eusebe, 
 
 Brother Jacques, \ of the Priory of the Jacobins. 
 
 Brother Borromee, 
 Brother Panurge, 
 Maitre Bonhomet, host of the "Corne d'Abondance" inn. 
 Maitre Fournichon, host of " The Sword of the Brave Cheva« 
 
 Her." 
 Dame Fournichon, his wife. 
 
 Lardille de Chavantrade, wife of Eustache de Miradoux. 
 Militor de Chavantrade, her son. 
 
 MAiTKE M.TON, ) b ; s . 
 
 Jean Friard, ) 
 Miron, a Physician. 
 
THE THREE MUSKETEERS 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 No other one of all the works of the elder Dumas, 
 with the possible exception of "Monte Cristo," is 
 so widely known and read, and so universally popu- 
 lar among English-speaking people, as that which 
 relates the thrilling adventures of the " Three Mus- 
 keteers" and their friend and brother, the clever 
 Gascon, D'Artagnan, who has held, for many years, 
 an undisputed place in the very front rank of heroes 
 of romance. In many countries and languages, and 
 upon the stage, the bravery and wit of the four 
 inseparables have enthralled and fascinated more 
 than one generation; and countless readers yet to 
 come will find enjoyment in the most striking ex- 
 emplification of the marvellous story-telling powers 
 of the great writer, of whom a favorite essayist 
 of our own day has said: "The past and present 
 are photographed imperishably on his brain; he 
 knows the manners of all ages and all countries, 
 the names of all the arms that men have used, all 
 the garments they have worn, all the dishes they 
 have tasted, all the terms of all professions from 
 swordsmanship to coach-building." 
 
42 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 Those readers who find a never-failing source of 
 enjoyment in what Macaulay might have called 
 the audacia Gasconica of D'Artagnan, and in the 
 simple-hearted, good-humored, unquestioning loy- 
 alty of Porthos, the Titan ; who never tire of 
 travelling with the famous four from Paris to 
 London to save the honor of Anne of Austria; 
 Who follow with bated breath the gradual perver- 
 sion and corruption by Milady of the Puritan 
 Felton, and shudder at the vengeance wreaked 
 upon her by those to whom her hideous crimes 
 have brought unhappiness and suffering, — all such 
 may take comfort in the assurance that every pain- 
 ful or pleasurable emotion they feel has been felt 
 and acknowledged by those whose judgment in 
 matters literary we love to respect. The list is a 
 long one of eminent writers who have borne testi- 
 mony to the enjoyment they have taken in the 
 doughty deeds of the heroes of these volumes. 
 
 " Think of a whole day in bed and a good novel 
 for a companion ! " says Thackeray, in his " Kound- 
 about Papers." "The Chevalier d'Artagnan to tell 
 me stories from dawn to night ! . . . Suppose 
 Athos, Porthos, and Aramis should enter with a 
 noiseless swagger, curling their mustaches. ... Of 
 your heroic heroes, I think Monseigneur Athos, 
 Count de la Fere, is my favorite. I have read 
 about him from sunrise to sunset with the utmost 
 contentment of mind. He has passed through how 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 43 
 
 many volumes ? Forty ? Fifty ? I wish, for my 
 part, there were a hundred more, and would never 
 tire of him rescuing prisoners, punishing ruffians, 
 and running scoundrels through the midriff with 
 his most graceful rapier. Ah, Athos, Porthos, and 
 Aramis, you are a magnificent trio ! " 
 
 Eobert Louis Stevenson and Hay ward, the clever 
 essayist, have put themselves, unhesitatingly, on 
 record as ardent admirers of Dumas and his chiv- 
 alrous heroes ; and Andrew Lang surrenders to the 
 Charm quite as completely, and in his most grace* 
 ful manner, in one of his "Letters to Dead 
 Authors." 
 
 " You gave us," he writes, " the valor of 
 D'Artagnan, the strength of Porthos, the melan- 
 choly nobility of Athos : Honor, Chivalry, and 
 Friendship. I declare your characters are real 
 people to me, and old friends. . . . The reproach of 
 being amusing has somewhat dimmed your fame 
 for a moment. The shadow of this tyranny will 
 soon be overpast, and men and women — and above 
 all, boys — will laugh and weep over the page of 
 Alexandre Dumas. Like Scott himself, you take 
 us captive in our childhood. I remember a very 
 idle little boy who was busy with the 'Three 
 Musketeers' when he should have been occupied 
 with ' Wilkins's Latin Prose.' ' Twenty years after ' 
 (alas ! and more) he is still constant to that gallant 
 company, and at this very moment is breathlessly 
 
44 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 wondering whether Grimaud will steal M. de Beau- 
 fort out of the Cardinal's prison." 
 
 It may be said of this and of the other volumes 
 of the group in which D'Artagnan is a principal 
 figure, as indeed it may be said of all the historical 
 tales of this incomparable writer, that the interest 
 is greatly intensified by the knowledge that in all 
 the main features, as well as in many details, the 
 narrative deals with well-vouched historical facts, 
 and with personages who have actually existed, 
 and whose portraits are generally drawn with great 
 faithfulness. 
 
 The leading motive of this tale, Cardinal Kiche- 
 lieu's bitter enmity to Anne of Austria and to her 
 bosom-friend and confidante, Madame de Chevreuse, 
 is a well-authenticated fact. The same is true of 
 the king's lack of affection for his wife, which 
 originated in her apparent partiality for his brother 
 Gaston, who was at first known as Due d'Anjou, 
 afterwards as Due d'Orle*ans, and was the father of 
 " La Grande Mademoiselle." The disappointment of 
 Louis XIII. at the queen's long-continued sterility 
 contributed to alienate his affection from her; but 
 the powerful influence of the king's master, the 
 omnipotent cardinal, was the principal factor in 
 keeping the husband and wife apart. 
 
 Eichelieu's hatred for the young queen dated 
 from an early period after her arrival in France, — 
 when the queen mother, Marie de Mddicis, although 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 45 
 
 somewhat- discredited, was still a power to be reck- 
 oned with, and in the event of the king's death 
 without issue, would again become regent during 
 the minority of Gaston, a contingency equally to be 
 dreaded by the queen and the cardinal. Louis was 
 ill, how ill no one knew; and the cardinal deter- 
 mined on a bold stroke. He arrayed himself in the 
 costume of a cavalier — he was then young and 
 handsome — and paid a visit to Anne of Austria 
 one evening at the hour when her ladies generally 
 left her alone ; he desired to speak with her, so he 
 said, on affairs of State. Unattended except by her 
 old Spanish maid, she received him graciously, and 
 was at once informed by him that his real purpose 
 was to speak of her own affairs. 
 
 He told her that the king was seriously ill, that 
 his physician had told him that, although death 
 was not imminent, he could never recover ; and he 
 thereupon forcibly impressed upon her how deplor- 
 able would be her situation if the king should die 
 without an heir of his body. 
 
 She was painfully surprised, but replied to his 
 representations that their fate was in God's hands, 
 and nothing more was to be said. 
 
 " Yes," said the cardinal, smiling ; " but God said 
 to his creatures: 'Help yourself and heaven will 
 help you.' " 
 
 Being pressed by the queen to divulge his real 
 meaning, he finally did so, and avowed his love for 
 
46 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 her as a justification for the audacious proposals he 
 dared to make. The queen- "dissembled her con- 
 tempt, and determined to see how far the cardinal's 
 passion would carry him." 
 
 She demanded time for reflection, and made an 
 appointment with him for the next night; and in 
 the meantime, in concert with Madame de Chevreuse, 
 concocted a scheme to make him ridiculous. When 
 he appeared the next night, the queen said that she 
 desired to put his affection to the proof, and there- 
 fore demanded that he should dance a saraband for 
 her in the costume of a Spanish buffoon. To her 
 surprise he at once consented, on condition that she 
 should be the only spectator, and that the music 
 should be furnished by a retainer of his own. 
 
 The following night, Madame de Chevreuse, 
 Vauthier, and Beringhen were carefully stowed 
 away behind a screen. The violinist appeared, 
 followed shortly by the cardinal himself, arrayed in 
 green velvet breeches and doublet, with silver bells 
 at his knees and castanets in his hands. 
 
 At a gesture from the queen, " he began to perform 
 the saraband, capering about the room and waving 
 his arms in due form. Unluckily, the very serious- 
 ness with which the cardinal went about it was so 
 absurd to look upon that the queen could not keep 
 a sober face, and burst out laughing. A prolonged 
 shriek of laughter came from behind the screen, like 
 an echo of hers. The cardinal saw that what he 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 47 
 
 had taken for a special favor was only a practical 
 joke, and he left the room in a furious rage. . . . 
 Poor fools they were to play thus with the cardinal- 
 duke's wrath ! To be sure, that wrath was still an 
 unknown quantity. After the death of Bouteville, 
 Montmorency, Chalais, and Cinq-Mars, they cer- 
 tainly would not have risked such a dangerous 
 pleasantry. 
 
 "While they were laughing at its success the 
 cardinal was vowing everlasting hatred to Anne of 
 Austria and Madame de Chevreuse." 
 
 When the Duke of Buckingham, the magnificent 
 and accomplished courtier and favorite of Charles 
 I., came to the French court as negotiator of the 
 projected alliance between Charles, then Prince of 
 Wales, and the king's sister, Henrietta Maria, he 
 fell at once a victim to the charms of the queen, 
 and made no secret of his infatuation. The jealous 
 hatred of the cardinal was quick to seize this means 
 of annoying the woman who had so deeply wounded 
 his self-esteem. His emissaries watched every move- 
 ment of the queen and the ambassador, and by his 
 means devices of all sorts were resorted to, and 
 traps laid to dishonor her. As the difficulties in 
 the way of meeting the object of his affections, 
 except by stealth, became greater, the duke's expe- 
 dients to overcome them became ever more daring 
 and foolhardy, and in all of them he found a zeal- 
 ous coadjutor in Madame de Chevreuse, — " lovely. 
 
48 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 clever, and audacious, . . . ready to enter heart and 
 soul into any intrigue, no matter how whimsical 
 or hare-brained." 
 
 The duke prolonged the negotiations for the 
 marriage as long as he could, and when at last he 
 was obliged to leave France with the new queen of 
 England, he used all his power to obtain a perma- 
 nent appointment as ambassador to Louis XIII. 
 
 "He set fire to two great kingdoms," says one 
 chronicler, " staking the future of England, whose 
 ruin he nearly compassed, and his own life, which 
 he finally lost, against the chance of remaining in 
 France as ambassador, in order to be near Anne of 
 Austria, in spite of the inflexible determination of 
 Eichelieu." 
 
 The episode of the diamond studs, in which 
 D'Artagnan's passion for Madame Bonacieux leads 
 to our heroes' playing so prominent a part, actually 
 occurred, substantially as here related : the queen 
 bestowed the jewels upon the infatuated duke ; the 
 snare was laid by the cardinal, and Buckingham 
 gave a most convincing proof of his devotion when 
 he put an embargo upon all the ports of England 
 while his own jeweller was making fac-similes to 
 replace two of the pendants which had been cut off 
 by "Milady Clarik." 
 
 It is equally true that the murderous deed of 
 the fanatic Felton occurred at a moment most 
 opportunely chosen to serve the ends of Louis XIIL, 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 49 
 
 — that is to say, of Eichelieu. The joy of both at 
 the death of the duke was exuberant and openly 
 expressed; and Anne of Austria believed, to her 
 dying day, that her relentless foe inspired the 
 deed. 
 
 A short time before the tragic death of Bucking- 
 ham, Eichelieu had dealt a deadly blow at the 
 queen's credit, and had struck dismay into the 
 hearts of all his enemies by his characteristically 
 clever manipulation of the conspiracy of Chalais, 
 in which Gaston d' Orleans and the two illegitimate 
 sons of Henri IV. by Gabriel d'Estrdes were involved. 
 By promising clemency to Chalais, he forced from 
 him a confession, in which he denounced the queen 
 and Gaston as parties to a plot to assassinate king 
 and cardinal, and to marry one another. The results 
 of this affair were the disgrace of the queen, the 
 unwilling marriage of Gaston to Mademoiselle de 
 Guise, and the exile of Madame de Chevreuse, 
 whose stolen visits to Paris and correspondence 
 with Aramis under the name of Marie Mich on 
 form one of the brightest episodes in the "Three 
 Musketeers." 
 
 In the succeeding volumes of this cycle, the 
 reader will fall in again with the Gascon and his 
 tried and true friends, and follow their fortunes 
 through stirring and troublous times, when they 
 had become to some extent involved in the political 
 movements of the period ; but will never find them 
 more attractive or more diverting than in the early 
 
50 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 days of their defensive and offensive alliance, when 
 they thought no more of casting defiance in the 
 teeth of the great cardinal himself than of breakfast- 
 ing in the bastion of Saint-Gervais, under the guns 
 of Eochelle, to win a wager, — when, in short, they 
 made for themselves the reputation for dauntless 
 courage, invincible prowess, and chivalrous gal- 
 lantry which passed into a tradition at the French 
 court. 
 
THE THREE MUSKETEERS. 
 
 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 Period, 1626-1628 
 
 Louis XIII., King of France. 
 Anne of Austria., his wife. 
 
 Arm and Jean Duplessis, Cardinal Richelieu, Minister of State. 
 George Vllliers, Duke of Buckingham. 
 Patrick, his confidential servant. 
 M. de Treville, Captain of the King's Musketeers. 
 Due de la Tremouille, commanding the Cardinal's Guards. 
 D'Artagnan, a Gascon adventurer, afterwards lieutenant in the 
 King's Musketeers. 
 thos, ^ urj^gg Musketeers," serving under M. de 
 
 * 0MHM ' I Treville. 
 
 Aramis, J 
 
 CoilTE DE RoCHEFORT, ^ 
 
 Coaite de Wardes, V in the service of Richelieu. 
 
 Lady de Winter, J 
 
 Duchesse de Chevreuse, the friend of Anne of Austria. 
 
 M. le Comte de Soissons, 
 
 Due d'Elboeuf, 
 
 CoiiTE d'Harcourt, 
 
 M. de Baradas, 
 
 DUC DE LONGUEVILLE, 
 CoilTE DE LA RoCHE-GUYON, 
 CoilTE DE CRAMAIL, 
 
 Chevalier de Souveray, 
 M. de Liancourt. 
 
 f of the French Court. 
 
52 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 
 French officers at the Siege of 
 Rochelle. 
 
 M. de Seguier, keeper of the Seals. 
 M. de Bassompierre, 
 
 M. DE ScHOMBERG, 
 
 Due d'Angouleme, 
 
 M. DE ToiRAS, 
 
 La Chesnaye, confidential valet of Louis XIII. 
 
 Donna Estefania, the Spanish confidant of Anne of Austria. 
 
 M. Laporte, the queen's servant. 
 
 Madame de Guitaut, ^ 
 
 Madame de Sable, I . . 
 
 Madame de Montbazon, f m atte » dance ™ Aime of Austria. 
 
 Madame de Guemenee, J 
 
 Madame de Surgis, ) spies of Richelieu, attending on Anne 
 
 Madame de Lannoy, ) of Austria. 
 
 Jacques Michel Bonacieux. . 
 
 Constance, his wife, in love with D'Artagnan. 
 
 M. Coquenard, procurator. 
 
 Madame Coquenard, in love with Porthos. 
 
 Grimaud, servant to Athos. 
 
 Mousqueton, Porthos's servant. 
 
 Bazin, servant to Aramis. 
 
 Planchet, D'Artagnan's servant. 
 
 M. d'Essart, brother-in-law of M. de Treville, commanding a 
 
 company of the King's Guards. 
 Sieur de la Coste, an ensign in the King's Guards. 
 M. de Montaran, of the Musketeers. 
 M. Duhallter, commanding a company of guards. 
 M. de Busigny, of the light horse. 
 M. de Cavois, j c tains b the Cardinal > s Guards> 
 La Houdiniere, ) 
 M. de Jussac, 
 M. de Cahusac, 
 
 M. DE Bl CARAT, 
 
 M. DE Bernajoux, 
 
 Vitray, a messenger of Cardinal Richelieu. 
 
 of the Cardinal's Guards. 
 
LIST OF CHARACTERS. 53 
 
 Lubin, lackey of Comte de Wardes. 
 
 Brisemont, a soldier. 
 
 Eourreau, a lackey. 
 
 Godeau, Purveyor of the Musketeers. 
 
 The Executioner of Lille. 
 
 The Superior of the Carmelite Convent at Bethune. 
 
 The Curate op Montdidier. 
 
 The Principal of Amiens, superior of the Jesuits. 
 
 M. d'Artagnan, the elder, ) 
 
 Madame d'Artagnan, J ^'Artagnan's parents. 
 
 Host of the Jolly Miller. 
 
 Host of the Golden Lily. 
 
 Host of the Great St. Martin Tavern. 
 
 Host of the Red Dovecot. 
 
 Lord de Winter, brother-in-law of Lady de Winter. 
 
 Kitty, Lady de Winter's maid. 
 
 Jackson, secretary of Buckingham, 
 
 Lieutenant John Eelton, a Puritan in the service of Lord 
 
 de Winter, afterwards Buckingham's assassin. 
 O'Reilly, a goldsmith. 
 Captain Butler, commanding an English sloop. 
 
TWENTY YEARS AFTER. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 " Twenty years after " the concluding scenes of 
 the " Three Musketeers " bring the reader to the 
 year 1648, — the year which saw the beginning of 
 the burlesque wars of the Fronde in France, and the 
 grim and tragical close of the Civil War in Eng- 
 land, with the trial and execution of Charles I., — 
 D'Artagnan, still the typical Gascon, still lieutenant 
 of Musketeers after twenty years of service, and 
 somewhat inclined to repine at the ingratitude of 
 Anne of Austria, the powerful Regent, in leaving 
 so long unrewarded the valuable services rendered 
 to Anne of Austria, the persecuted and despised 
 queen, is quick to discern an opportunity to repeat 
 the exploits of the early days. 
 
 With that object in view he sets out from Paris in 
 search of his former companions. At Noisy he finds 
 Aramis, who is now known as Monsieur l'Abbe' 
 d'Herblay, but whose sanctity is still largely flavored 
 with worldliness, and whose affections have been 
 transferred from Madame de Chevreuse to Madame 
 la Duchesse de Longueville, sister of the "great" 
 
56 INTRODUCTOEY NOTE. 
 
 Conde". She was the daughter of the beautiful 
 Charlotte de Montmorency (matre pulchra filia 
 pulchrior), and was born in the donjon at Vin- 
 cennes ; as she was the heart and soul of the 
 Fronde, our hero found her lover little minded to 
 draw his sword for Mazarin. On the confines of 
 Picardy, on one of the estates from which he derives 
 his high-sounding appellation of Monsieur du Vallon 
 de Bracieux de Pierrefonds, lives Porthos, the giant, 
 bursting with ambition to be created a baron, but 
 still the same faithful, trusting, good-humored soul, 
 asking but to follow wherever his cleverer friends 
 may lead. With him D'Artagnan makes rendez- 
 vous at Paris, and departs for Blois, where he finds 
 his former companion-in-arms, the misanthropic and 
 melancholy, but noble-minded Athos, transformed 
 into the Comte de la Fere. With his plebeian 
 name he has laid aside his tendency to indulge 
 inordinately in wine, and has become the perfect 
 type of a French gentleman in the highest sense of 
 the words. Dwelling on his estate of Bragelonne, 
 near Blois, he is rearing his son (from whom the 
 concluding work of this great series takes its 
 name) upon his own pattern, to emulate his virtues 
 and his accomplishments. 
 
 Our gallant friends, always one in heart and 
 purpose, though sometimes nominally enlisted on 
 opposite sides, count for much in the opening 
 scenes of the extraordinary uprising against Maz- 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 57 
 
 arin, the Italian minister and master, if not the 
 spouse, of the Spanish Queen-Eegent, Anne of 
 Austria. Once more, too, the reader is taken across 
 the Channel, and made to witness, at close quarters, 
 the final scenes in the terrible drama which was 
 enacted on English soil. 
 
 A curious, unique episode, and impossible of 
 occurrence in any other country than France, was 
 the "War of the Fronde," — a war which, in the 
 words of Voltaire, "except for the names of the 
 King of France, the great Conde', and the capital 
 of the kingdom, would have been as ridiculous as 
 that of the Barberini ; " a war in which no one 
 knew why he was in arms, and in which every 
 prominent actor changed sides so frequently that 
 one's brain whirls with the attempt to follow the 
 course of events ; a war of couplets rather than of 
 firearms, with women for leaders of the various 
 factions, and cabals made and unmade by the 
 exigencies of love affairs." 
 
 The Duchesse de Longueville shared with " La 
 Grande Mademoiselle," the daughter of Gaston, 
 Due d'Orle'ans, the honor of being the most promi- 
 nent Frondeuse. Mademoiselle is said to have 
 trained the guns with her own hands upon the 
 king's troops at the so-called "Battle of Saint- 
 Antoine." The Due de la Eochefoucauld, who 
 was wounded in that affair, wrote to Madame de 
 Longueville : — 
 
58 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 " Pour meriter son coeur, pour plaire a ses beaux yeux, 
 J'ai fait la guerre aux rois ; je l'aurai faite aux dieux." * 
 
 In the memoirs of Mademoiselle appears a letter 
 from her father, Gaston, addressed to "Mesdames 
 les Comtesses, Mardchales de camp in the army of 
 my daughter now in the field against Mazarin." 
 
 These memoirs of Mademoiselle, with those of 
 Madame de Motteville, one of the queen's ladies- 
 in-waiting, and of the Cardinal de Ketz, who figures 
 in these volumes as the coadjutor Archbishop of 
 Paris, M. de G-ondy, are the principal authorities 
 for this period ; they were the main reliance of 
 Voltaire in writing those portions of the "Siecle 
 de Louis XIV." which deal with the Fronde. There 
 can be no more striking testimony to the extreme 
 closeness with which Dumas adheres to the facts of 
 history in the ground-work of his romances than is 
 afforded by a perusal of Voltaire's chapters upon 
 the period covered by this narrative. Save for the 
 exploits of the famous four, " Twenty Years After " 
 might fairly be called a history of the early days 
 of the Fronde, so closely does the author adhere to 
 the historical sequence of events and their effect, 
 to say nothing of his accuracy in matters of detail. 
 The demonstration against M. Broussel and the 
 other councillors during the "Te Deum" for the 
 
 * To win her love, to delight her lovely eyes, I have taken 
 up arms against the king ; I would have done the same against 
 the gods. 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 59 
 
 victory of Lens ; the " day of the barricades ; " the 
 queen's inclination to be obstinate ; the final flight 
 to Saint-Germain, and the scarcity of bedding there ; 
 the secession of the Prince de Conti and M. de 
 Longueville from the party of Mazarin ; the battle 
 between Conde\ with eight thousand troops, and a 
 hundred thousand bourgeois at Charenton, with the 
 unwarlike conduct of the coadjutor's Corinth regi- 
 ment, — these are by no means the only occurrences 
 related in these pages which rest upon unquestion- 
 able authority. 
 
 The Due de Beaufort, grandson of Henri IV. and 
 Gabrielle d'Estr^es, is one of the most picturesque 
 figures of the period, even though his character 
 was somewhat unstable. Not only is his escape 
 from Vincennes described here with substantial 
 accuracy, but the " roi des halles" as he was called 
 by the people who adored him, is himself pictured 
 to the very life, — even to his peculiar facility in 
 misusing words after the style of Mrs. Malaprop. 
 It is told of him that he said one day of Madame 
 de Grignan, who was in mourning: "I met Ma- 
 dame de Grignan to-day, and she looked very 
 lubrique" (dissolute), — meaning to say lugubre 
 (melancholy). She retaliated when she heard of 
 it, by saying, pointing to a German nobleman who 
 was present: "He is as like the Due de Beaufort 
 as one drop of water like another, except that he 
 speaks French better than the duke." The well- 
 
60 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 known niggardliness of the thrifty Mazarin was a 
 fair subject for M. de Beaufort's wit ; and the short 
 allowance of bed-linen on which the young king 
 was kept by him is well authenticated. 
 
 The chapter which describes the meeting at the 
 house of Scarron is particularly interesting for the 
 glimpse it gives us of " the beautiful Indian," Made- 
 moiselle Francois d'Aubigne\ She it was who be- 
 came Madame Scarron, and having been introduced 
 into the royal circle as governess of the king's 
 children by Madame de Montespan, at last sup- 
 planted her patroness in the affections of her august 
 sovereign ; and for thirty years ruled the kingdom 
 of France over the shoulders of the monarch, whose 
 unacknowledged wife she was. 
 
 It may be remarked, parenthetically, that the 
 incident related by Athos to Madame de Chevreuse 
 in connection with the birth of Eaoul de Bragelonne 
 is based upon an actual occurrence in the life of 
 that somewhat eccentric lady. 
 
 Voltaire calls attention to the striking contrast, 
 as exemplified in their widely different methods of 
 rebelling against constituted authority, between the 
 national characteristics of the English, " who entered 
 into their civil troubles with melancholy implaca- 
 bility and fury which was carefully thought out 
 beforehand ; who took their king in battle, brought 
 him before a court of justice, interrogated him, con- 
 demned him to death, and executed him publicly 
 
INTEODUCTOKY NOTE. 61 
 
 with the utmost decorum and regard for the forms 
 of law," and those of the French, "who plunged 
 into rebellion from mere caprice and with a smile 
 on their lips," under the leadership of beautiful 
 women who used their charms as a means of 
 seducing their opponents. Witness the intrigue 
 between Madame de Longueville and Mare'chal 
 Turenne. 
 
 This contrast has never been more strikingly 
 brought out than in these volumes, by the gifted 
 author who has so illumined and enlivened, with 
 his marvellous art, many of the most entertaining 
 and engrossing periods of French history that the 
 history itself is made to possess tenfold interest, 
 just as the zest of the romance is enhanced by the 
 historical accuracy of the facts upon which it is 
 built. 
 
 In the first of his " Eoundabout Papers," Thack- 
 eray tells of a visit to Chur in the Grisons, and of 
 a boy whom he fell in with in his walks, so absorbed 
 in a book he was reading as to be utterly oblivious 
 to aught else. 
 
 "What was it that so fascinated the young stu- 
 dent as he stood by the river-shore ? Not the Pons 
 Asinorum. What book so delighted him, and blinded 
 him to all the rest of the world, so that he did not 
 care to see the apple-woman with her fruit, or (more 
 tempting still to sons of Eve) the pretty girls with 
 their apple cheeks, who laughed and prattled round 
 
62 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 the fountain ! What was the book ? Do you sup- 
 pose it was Li vy, or the Greek grammar? No; it 
 was a novel that you were reading, you lazy, not 
 very clean, good-for-nothing, sensible boy ! It was 
 D'Artagnan locking up General Monk in a box, or 
 almost succeeding in keeping Charles the First's 
 head on. It was the prisoner of the Chateau d'lf 
 cutting himself out of the sack fifty feet under 
 water (I mention the novels I like best myself — 
 novels without love or talking, or any of that sort 
 of nonsense, but containing plenty of fighting, escap- 
 ing, robbery, and rescuing) — cutting himself out of 
 the sack, and swimming to the island of Monte 
 Cristo ! . . . Dumas ! thou brave, kind, gal- 
 lant old Alexandre ! I hereby offer thee homage 
 and give thee thanks for many pleasant hours. I 
 have read thee (being sick in bed) for thirteen hours 
 of a happy day, and had the ladies of the house 
 fighting for the volumes." 
 
 And again he says : " I think of the prodigal 
 banquets to which this Lucullus of a man has 
 invited me, with thanks and wonder. To what a 
 series of splendid entertainments he has treated me ! 
 Where does he find the money for these prodigious 
 feasts ? " 
 
 In the genial company of the author of " Esmond," 
 we need not blush to enjoy the " prodigious feast " 
 of adventures — amusing, thrilling, and tragical — 
 which befall the gallant Frenchmen on both sides 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 63 
 
 of the channel. The old tie, formed twenty years 
 before in the ranks of the musketeers, strengthened 
 by lapse of time, by their chivalrous sympathy for 
 fallen grandeur in the person of the ill-fated Eng- 
 lish monarch, by the shadow of the terrible scene at 
 Armentieres, and its sequel in the relentless hatred 
 of Mordaunt, Milady's worthy son, — the old tie, 
 we say, was too strong to be even strained by the 
 wiles of the low-born Mazarin; so that, whether 
 Frondeurs or Cardinalists in name, they are always 
 true brothers-in-arms. 
 
TWENTY YEAKS AFTER. 
 
 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 Period, The Regency of Anne of Austria, 1648-1649. 
 
 Anne op Austria. 
 
 Louis XIV., at the age of ten. 
 
 His Eminence Cardinal Mazarin, Prime Minister of Prance. 
 
 Bernouin, his valet. 
 
 Laporte, attendant of the young King. 
 
 Louis de Bourbon, Prince de Conde. 
 
 Due de Chatillon, serving under him. 
 
 Marechal de Grammont. 
 
 CoMTE DE GUICHE, his SOU. 
 
 M. d'Arminges, preceptor of Comte de Guiche. 
 
 Gaston, Due d'Orleans, the King's uncle, 
 
 Duchesse d'Orleans, 
 
 La Grande Mademoiselle, daughter of Gaston of Orleans. 
 
 Princesse de Conde, 
 
 Marechal de Villeroy, 
 
 Marechal de Meilleraie, 
 
 Pontrailles, his aide-de-camp. 
 
 M. de Plamarens, 
 
 Chancellor Seguier, 
 
 Abbe de la Riviere, 
 
 Chevalier de Coislin, 
 
 Madame de Motteville, 
 
 Socratin, her sister, 
 
 Madame de Bregy, |. the Queen's ladies. 
 
 Mademoiselle de Beaumont, 
 
 Madame Beauvais, 
 
 . of the Court 
 
6Q LIST OF CHAKACTEKS. 
 
 Beeinghen, the Queen's first valet de chambre. 
 
 M. d'^meey, Superintendent of Finances. 
 
 M. Blancmesnil, President of the Parliament. 
 
 M. du Teemblay, Governor of the Bastille. 
 
 M. de Chavigny, Governor of Yincennes Prison. 
 
 La Kamee, j officers at vinceniies 
 
 M. de Poins, ) 
 
 M. d'Abtagnan, lieutenant in the King's Musketeers. 
 
 M. de Bellieee, 
 
 M. du Yeegee. ,«■ 1 i 
 
 _. * : Musketeers. 
 
 M. de Cambon, 
 
 M. DE LlLLEBONNE, . 
 
 M. de Guitaut, captain of the Queen's Guards. 
 
 M. de Comminges, lieutenant of the Queen's Guards. 
 
 M. de Saint-Laueent, of the Queen's Guards. 
 
 M. de Yillequiee, captain of the King's Guards. 
 
 Nogent Beautin, the Court Pool. 
 
 Comte de la Peee (formerly called Athos). 
 
 Vicomte de Beagelonne, his son. 
 
 Chevaliee d'Heeblay (Aramis). 
 
 M. du Yallon de Beacieux de Piebeeeonds (Porthos). 
 
 Mousqueton, his servant. 
 
 Mademoiselle Louise de la Yalliebe. 
 
 Madame de Saint-Bemy, her mother. 
 
 Abbe Scaeeon. 
 
 Chaupeeeois, his servant. 
 
 Mademoiselle Feancoise D'Aubigne, afterwards Madame 
 
 Scarron and Madame de Maintenon. 
 Mademoiselle Paulet 
 M. Menage, 
 m. de scudeey. 
 Mademoiselle de Scudeey. 
 La Beuyeee, 
 Baethois, 
 
 j soldiers on guard at Rueil. 
 
LIST OF CHARACTERS. 67 
 
 The Curate op Bethune. 
 The Executioner of Bethune. 
 Dame Nanette, servant of Councillor Broussel. 
 M. Perez, landlord of Bedford's tavern. 
 FROKDEURS. 
 
 Due de Beaufort, grandson of Henri IV. 
 
 DUCHESSE DE LoNGUEYILLE. 
 DUCHESSE DE ChEYREUSE. 
 
 Dec de Loxgueyille. 
 Drc de Chevreese. 
 Prince de Conti. 
 Due d'Elbcbuf. 
 Due de Bouillon. 
 Marechal de la Mothe. 
 M. de Luyxes. 
 Marquis de Yitry. 
 Prince de Marclllac. 
 Marquis de Noirmoutiers. 
 
 COMTE DE ElESQUE. 
 
 Marquis de Laig-ues. 
 
 CoilTE DE MONTRESOR. 
 
 Marquis de Sevigne. 
 M. de Brissac. 
 M. de Chanleu. 
 
 Abbe Jean - Erancois de Gondy, the Coadjutor, afterwards 
 Cardinal de Ketz. 
 
 CoilTE DE ROCHEFORT. 
 
 Councillor Broussel. 
 
 Louvteres, his son. 
 
 Chevalier d'Humeres. 
 
 Planchet, formerly D'Artagnan's servant, now a confectioner. 
 
 Bazin, beadle at Notre Dame. 
 
 Priests of St. Merri, St. Sulpice, and St. Eustache. 
 
 Maillard, a mendicant. 
 
- servants of Comte de la Fere. 
 
 68 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 
 Madelaine Turquaine, hostess of the Hotel de la Chevrette, 
 
 D'Artagnan's lodgings. 
 Friquet, a choir-boy at Notre Dame. 
 Grimaud, " 
 
 C HARLOT, 
 
 Olivain, 
 
 Blasois, 
 
 Boisjoli, servant of Due de Beaufort. 
 
 Noirmont, the Due de Beaufort's steward. 
 
 Host of the Cygne de la Croix. 
 
 Gros Louis, a farmer at St. Germain. 
 
 Landlord of the Crowned Sheep. 
 
 Urbain, a soldier attending on Comte de Guiche. 
 
 ENGLISH. 
 
 Charles I., King of England. 
 
 Henrietta of France, his wife. 
 
 The Princess Henrietta, ^ 
 
 The Princess Charlotte, >■ his children. 
 
 The Duke of Gloucester, J 
 
 Oliver Cromwell. 
 
 Colonel Harrison, ^ 
 
 Captain Groslow, J- officers in Cromwell's army. 
 
 Colonel Tomlinson, J 
 
 President Bradshaw, of the High Court, trying Charles I. 
 
 Lady Fairfax. 
 
 Bishop Juxon. 
 
 John Francis de Winter, in the service of Cromwell, under 
 
 the name of Mordaunt. 
 Lord de Winter, his uncle. 
 Parry, servant of Charles I. 
 Earl of Leven. 
 Patrick, a sailor. 
 
THE 
 
 VICOMTE DE BRAGELONNE. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 The "Vicomte de Bragelonne," the longest and in 
 many respects the most powerful of the D'Artagnan 
 series, was first presented to the English-speaking 
 public in an unabridged translation, conforming to 
 the author's own arrangement and in readable form, 
 by the present publishers. Owing to its great 
 length it had previously been translated only in 
 an abridged form. Detached portions of it, too, 
 have appeared from time to time. The chapters 
 devoted to Mademoiselle de la Valliere have been 
 published separately under the title of " Louise de 
 la Valliere," while what is commonly known as 
 "The Iron Mask" is a translation of that portion 
 of Bragelonne which relates the attempted substi- 
 tution of the Bastille prisoner for Louis XIV. 
 
 The romance, as it was written and as it is here 
 presented in English, offers a marvellously faithful 
 picture of the French court from a period imme- 
 diately preceding the young king's marriage to his 
 cousin, Maria Theresa, the Infante of Spain, to the 
 
70 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 downfall of Fouquet. This period was a moment- 
 ous one for France, embracing as it did the diplo- 
 matic triumph of Mazarin in the advantageous 
 Treaty of the Pyrenees ; the death of that avaricious 
 and unscrupulous, but eminently able and far-seeing, 
 minister and cardinal ; the assumption of power by 
 Louis in person; and the rise to high office and 
 influence over the crushed and disgraced Fouquet, 
 of Jean-Baptiste Colbert. These two years marked 
 the beginning of the most brilliant epoch of court 
 life in France, as well as of her greatest, if some- 
 what factitious, glory both at home and abroad. 
 
 The historical accuracy of the author of " Brage- 
 lonne " — which Miss Pardoe, in her justly popular 
 and entertaining work on Louis XIV., and the 
 historian Michelet as well, have so strongly main- 
 tained — is perhaps more striking in this than in 
 any other of his romances. It is not only in the 
 matter of the events of greater or less importance 
 that one familiar with the history of the period seems 
 to be reading some contemporary chronicle, but the 
 character-sketches of the prominent personages are 
 drawn with such entire fidelity to life that we seem 
 to see the very men and women themselves as they 
 appeared to their contemporaries. 
 
 Thus it is with the king, whose intense egotism 
 was beginning to develop, being unceasingly fos- 
 tered by the flattery of those who surrounded him 
 and told him that he was the greatest of men and 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 71 
 
 kings, invincible in arms and unequalled in wis- 
 dom ; who was rapidly reaching that state of sub- 
 lime self-sufficiency which led to the famous saying : 
 " L'fitat, c'est moi ; " but who was, nevertheless, 
 more bashful and timid and humble at the feet of 
 the gentle and retiring La Yalliere than if she had 
 been the greatest queen in Christendom. 
 
 Of his favorites La Yalliere was the only one 
 who loved him for himself alone, and she has come 
 down to us as one of the few Frenchwomen who 
 have ever been ashamed of being known as a king's 
 mistress. Her life is faithfully sketched in these 
 pages, from her first glimpse of the king at Blois, 
 when she gave her heart to him unasked. When 
 the scheme was formed to use her as a cloak for 
 the king's flirtation with Madame Henriette, " there 
 was a rumor connecting her name with that of a 
 certain Yicomte de Bragelonne, who had caused her 
 young heart to utter its first sighs in Blois ; but the 
 most malicious gossips spoke of it only as a childish 
 flame, — that is to say, utterly without importance." 
 
 Mademoiselle de Montalais made herself notori- 
 ous as a go-between in various love affairs, while 
 Mademoiselle de Tonnay-Oharente, otherwise Made- 
 moiselle de Eochechouart-Mortemart, clever and 
 beautiful, was destined, as Madame de Montespan, 
 to supplant her modest friend in the affections of 
 their lord and master ; and after a career of unex- 
 ampled brilliancy to be herself supplanted by the 
 
72 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 governess of her legitimated children, the widow 
 Scarron, better known as Madame la Marquise de 
 Maintenon. 
 
 " Une maitresse tonnante et triomphante," Madame 
 de Sevigne' calls Madame de Montespan. The Mor- 
 temart family was supposed to be of the greatest 
 antiquity and to have the same origin as the English 
 Mortimers. The esprit de Mortemart, or Mortemart 
 wit, was reputed to be an inalienable characteristic 
 of the race. And what of Madame herself, who 
 played a part at the court of France which was 
 almost exactly duplicated forty years later by her 
 granddaughter, the Savoy princess, who became 
 Duchesse de Bourgogne, and whose untimely death 
 was one of the most severe of the many domestic 
 afflictions which darkened the last years of the old 
 king's life ? Let us listen for a moment to Eobert 
 Louis Stevenson, writing of the " Yicomte de Brage- 
 lonne " after his fifth or sixth perusal of it : — 
 
 " Madame enchants me. I can forgive that royal 
 minx her most serious offences ; I can thrill and 
 soften with the king on that memorable occasion 
 when he goes to upbraid and remains to flirt ; and 
 when it conies to the ' Allons, aimez-moi done,' it is 
 my heart that melts in the bosom of De Guiche." 
 
 The mutual passion of De Guiche and Madame 
 lasted all her life, we are told; and yet, alas! it was 
 but short-lived, for Madame's days were numbered. 
 She died in 1670, after an illness of but a few hours, 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 73 
 
 regretted by everybody except her husband. There 
 is little doubt that she was poisoned through the 
 instrumentality of the Chevalier de Lorraine, and 
 probably with the connivance of Monsieur, whose 
 favorite he was. The Chevalier was a prodigy of 
 vice, and one of the most unsavory characters of 
 the period. 
 
 The greed and avarice of Mazarin were his most 
 prominent characteristics ; they are illustrated by 
 innumerable anecdotes, one of which may perhaps 
 be repeated here: He had been informed that a 
 pamphlet was about to be put on sale, in which he 
 was shamefully libelled; he confiscated it, and of 
 course the market price of it at once increased 
 enormously ; whereupon he sold it secretly at an 
 exorbitant figure and allowed it to circulate, pocket- 
 ing a thousand pistoles as his share of the transac- 
 tion. He used to tell of this himself, and laugh 
 heartily over it. His supreme power had endured 
 so long that everybody desired his death, and his 
 contemporaries hardly did justice to the very solid 
 benefits he had procured for France. 
 
 In drawing the characters of Fouquet and Colbert, 
 Dumas has perhaps, as Mr. Stevenson says, shown 
 an inclination to enlist his reader's sympathies for 
 the former against his own judgment of the equities 
 of the case. 
 
 " Historic justice," says the essayist, " should be 
 all upon the side of Colbert, of official honesty and 
 
74 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 fiscal competence. And Dumas knows it well ; three 
 times at least he shows his knowledge, — once it 
 is but flashed upon us and received with the laughter 
 of Fouquet himself, in the jesting controversy in 
 the gardens of Saint-Mande' ; once it is touched on 
 by Aramis in the forest of Se'nart ; in the end it is 
 set before us clearly in one dignified speech of the 
 triumphant Colbert. But in Fouquet — the master, 
 the lover of good cheer and wit and art, the swift 
 transactor of much business, Vhpmme de bruit, 
 I'homme de plaisir, Vhomme qui n'est que parceque 
 les metres sont — Dumas saw something of himself, 
 and drew the figure the more tenderly ; it is to me 
 even touching to see how he insists on Fouquet's 
 honor." 
 
 The grand fete at Vaux was the last straw 
 which made the superintendent's downfall abso- 
 lutely certain. " If his disgrace had not already 
 been determined upon in the king's mind, it would 
 have been at Yaux. ... As there was but one sun 
 in heaven, there could be but one king in France." 
 
 It is interesting to read that the execution of 
 the order for Fouquet's arrest was entrusted to one 
 D 'Artagnan, Captain of Musketeers, "a man of 
 action, entirely unconnected with all the cabals, 
 and who, during his thirty-three years' experience 
 in the Musketeers, had never known anything 
 outside of his orders." 
 
 Fouquet lived nearly twenty years in prison, 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 75 
 
 and died in 1680. He has been connected in vari- 
 ous ways with the "Man with the Iron Mask," 
 some investigators "having maintained that he was 
 identical with that individual, and therefore could 
 not have died in 1680 ; while others have claimed 
 that the Iron Mask was imprisoned at the Chateau 
 of Pignerol while Fouquet was there. The legend 
 of the unfortunate prisoner has given rise to much 
 investigation and to many conjectures. Voltaire 
 bent his energies to solve the mystery, and in our 
 own day M. Marius Topin has gone into the subject 
 most exhaustively, but without reaching a satisfac- 
 tory conclusion as to the identity of the sufferer. 
 The somewhat audacious use made of the legend 
 by Dumas is based upon what was at one time a 
 favorite solution ; namely, that the unknown was a 
 brother of Louis XIV., said by some to have been 
 a twin, and by others to have been some years older 
 and of doubtful paternity. 
 
 It would be an endless task to cite all the por- 
 tions of these volumes in which historical facts are 
 related with substantial accuracy ; in them fact and 
 fiction are so blended that each enhances the charm 
 of the other, — the element of authenticity adding 
 zest and interest to the romantic portions, while the 
 element of romance gives life and color to the 
 narration of facts. 
 
 Our old friends of the earlier tales bear us com- 
 pany nearly to the end; but for the first time, 
 
76 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 political interests are allowed to interfere with the 
 perfect confidence that has existed between them: 
 Aramis, as General of the Jesuits, is true to the 
 reputation of the order, and hesitates at no dis- 
 simulation to gain his ambitious ends. Porthos, 
 still blindly faithful to that one of his friends who 
 claims his allegiance, falls at last a victim to his 
 childlike trust in the scheming prelate, and dies 
 the death of a veritable Titan. The magnificent 
 outburst of righteous anger which the Comte de la 
 Fere visits upon the king is the last expiring gleam 
 of the spirit of the Athos of the Musketeers. 
 Wrapped up in his love for the heart-broken Brage- 
 lonne, he lives only in his life and "dies in his 
 death." 
 
 And D'Artagnan ? His praises and his requiem 
 have been most fittingly and lovingly sounded by 
 the same graceful writer who has already been 
 quoted, and in the same essay, entitled "Gossip 
 upon a Novel of Dumas," — 
 
 " It is in the character of D'Artagnan that we must 
 look for that spirit of morality which is one of the 
 chief merits of the book, makes one of the main joys 
 of its perusal, and sets it high above more popular 
 rivals. ... He has mellowed into a man so witty, 
 rough, kind, and upright that he takes the heart by 
 storm. There is nothing of the copy-book about his 
 virtues, nothing of the drawing-room in his fine natural 
 civility ; he will sail near the wind ; he is no district 
 
INTEODUCTOEY NOTE. 77 
 
 visitor, no Wesley or Robespierre ; his conscience is 
 void of all refinement, whether for good or evil ; but 
 the whole man rings true like a good sovereign. . . . 
 Here and throughout, if I am to choose virtues for 
 myself or my friends, let me choose the virtues of 
 D'Artagnan. I do not say that there is no character 
 as well drawn in Shakespeare ; I do say there is none 
 that I love so wholly. . . . No part of the world has 
 ever seemed to me so charming as these pages ; and 
 not even my friends are quite so real, perhaps quite so 
 dear, as D'Artagnan." 
 
 Of the great closing chapters of the book, in 
 which the friends are at last separated by death, 
 D'Artagnan falling on the battle-field just as he 
 was about to grasp the coveted prize of the baton 
 of a marshal of France, Stevenson says : — 
 
 "I can recall no other work of the imagination in 
 which the end of life is represented with so nice a tact ; 
 . . . and above all, in the last volume, I find a singular 
 charm of spirit. It breathes a pleasant and a tonic 
 sadness, always brave, never hysterical. Upon the 
 crowded, noisy life of this long tale, evening gradually 
 falls, and the lights are extinguished, and the heroes 
 pass away one by one. One by one the}' go, and not a 
 regret embitters their departure. The }'oung succeed 
 them in their places. Louis Quatorze is swelling larger 
 and shining broader; another generation and another 
 France dawn on the horizon, — but for us and these old 
 men whom we have loved so long, the inevitable end 
 draws near and is welcome. To read this well is to 
 
78 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 anticipate experience. Ah ! if only when these hours 
 of the long shadows fall for us in reality and not in 
 figure, we ma}- hope to face them with a mind as quiet. 
 But my paper is running out ; the siege-guns are firing 
 on the Dutch frontier, and I must say adieu for the 
 fifth time to my old comrade, fallen on the field of 
 glory. Adieu, rather au revoir ! Yet a sixth time, 
 dearest D'Artagnan, we shall kidnap Monk and take 
 horse together for Belle Isle." 
 
THE 
 
 VICOMTE DE BRAGELONNE, 
 
 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 Period, 1660-1671. 
 
 Louis XIV., King of Prance. 
 Maria Theresa, his Queen. 
 Anne of Austria., the Queen Mother. 
 Gaston of Orleans, uncle of the King. 
 
 DUCHESSE D'OrLEANS, 
 
 Philippe, Due d'Anjou, brother of the King, afterwards Due 
 
 d' Orleans. 
 Henrietta of England, his wife. 
 Cardinal Mazarin. 
 Bernouin, his valet. 
 Brienne, his secretary. 
 M. le Due de Beaufort. 
 Prince de Conde. 
 
 Chevalier de Lorraine, favorite of Philippe d'Orleans. 
 Comte de Saint- Aignan, attending on the King. 
 Mademoiselle Marie de Mancini, niece of Cardinal Mazarin. 
 Mademoiselle Aure de Montalais, V 
 Mlle. Athenaise de Tonnay-Charente, T ^ aids of Honor t0 
 
 afterwards Madame de Montespan, f Henrietta, Duchesse 
 Mademoiselle Louise de la Valliere, J Orleans. 
 
 La Molina, Anne of Austria's Spanish nurse. 
 Duchesse de Chevretjse. 
 Madame de Motteville, ^ 
 
 Madame de Navailles, 
 
 Mademoiselle de Chatillon, V ladies of the Erench Court. 
 Comtesse de Soissons, 
 Mademoiselle Arnoux, 
 
80 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 
 Louise de Keroualle, afterwards Duchess of Portsmouth. 
 
 Marechal Grammont. 
 
 Comte de Guiche, his son, in love with Madame Henrietta. 
 
 M. de Manicamp, friend of the Comte de Guiche. 
 
 M. de Malicorne, in love with Mademoiselle de Montalais. 
 
 M. d'Artagnan, Lieutenant, afterwards Captain, of the King's 
 
 Musketeers. 
 Comte de la Pere (Athos). 
 
 RaOUL, VlCOMTE DE BRAGELONNE, his SOIL 
 
 M. d'Herblay, afterwards Bishop of Vannes, General of the 
 
 Order of Jesuits, and Due d' Alameda (Aramis). 
 Baron du Vallon de Bracieux de Pierrefonds (Porthos) 
 Jean Poquelin de Moliere. 
 
 VlCOMTE DE WARDES. 
 M. DE VlLLEROY. 
 
 M. de Pouquet, Superintendent of Pinance. 
 
 Madame Pouquet, his wife. 
 
 Messieurs Lyonne and Letellier, Pouquet's associates m 
 
 the ministry. 
 Marquise de Belliere, in love with Pouquet. 
 
 M. DE LA PONTAINE, "\ 
 M. GoURVILLE, 
 
 M. Pellisson, V friends of Pouquet. 
 
 M. Conrart, 
 
 M. LORET, 
 
 L'Abbe Pouquet, brother of the Superintendent. 
 
 M. Vanel, a Councillor of Parliament, afterwards Procureur- 
 General. 
 
 Marguerite Vanel, his wife, a rival of la Marquise de la Belliere. 
 
 M. de Saint-Remy, maitre-hotel to Gaston of Orleans. 
 
 Madame de Saint-Remy. 
 
 Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Intendant of Pinance, afterwards Prime 
 Minister. 
 
 Messieurs d'Infreville, Destouches, and Porant, in Col- 
 bert's service. 
 
Jesuits. 
 
 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 81 
 
 Messieurs Breteuil, Marin, and Havard, colleagues of 
 
 Colbert. 
 Messieurs d'Eymeris, Lyodot, and Vanin, Farmers-General 
 M. de Baisemaux de Montlezun, Governor of the Bastille. 
 Seldon, a prisoner at the Bastille. 
 IS T o. 3, Bertaudiere, afterwards " The Iron Mask." 
 M. de Saint-Mars, Governor of lie Sainte Marguerite. 
 A Franciscan Friar, General of the Order of Jesuits. 
 Baron von Wostpur, 
 Monseigneur Herrebia, 
 Meinheer Bonstett, 
 
 SlGNOR MARINI, 
 
 Lord MacCumnor, 
 
 Grisart, a physician. 
 
 Louis Constant de Pressigny, Captain 
 
 of the King's Frigate " Pomona." 
 M. de Gesvres, Captain of the King's Guards. 
 M. de Biscarrat, an officer of the King's Guards. 
 M. de Friedrich, an officer of the Swiss Guards. 
 Messire Jean Percerin, the King's tailor. 
 M. Valot, the King's physician. 
 Planchet, a confectioner in the Rue des Lombards. 
 Madame Gechter, his housekeeper. 
 Daddy Celestin, Planchet's servant. 
 Bazin, servant to M. d'Herblay. 
 Grimaud, an old servant of Athos. 
 Mousqueton, servant of Porthos. 
 Blasois, servant to Athos. 
 Olivain, servant of Yicomte de Bragelonne. 
 Jupenet, a printer, ~\ 
 
 Getard, an architect, J- in the service of Fouquet. 
 Danicamp, J 
 
 Menneville, an adventurer. 
 M. Lebrun, painter. 
 M. Faucheux, a goldsmith. 
 
82 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 
 Vatel, Fouquet's steward. 
 
 Toby, one of Fouquet's servants. 
 
 Yves, a sailor. 
 
 Keyser, a Dutch fisherman. 
 
 Maitre Cropole, of the hostelry of the Medici at Blois. 
 
 Pittrino, his assistant. 
 
 Madame Cropole. 
 
 Landlord of the Beau Paon Hotel. 
 
 Superior of the Carmelite Convent at Chaillot. 
 
 Guenaud, Mazarin's physician. 
 
 The Theatin Father, The Cardinal's spiritual director. 
 
 ENGLISH. 
 
 Charles II., King of England. 
 
 Parry, his servant. 
 
 General Monk, afterwards Duke of Albemarle. 
 
 Digby, his aide-de-camp. 
 
 General Lambert. 
 
 James, Duke of York, brother of Charles II. 
 
 George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. 
 
 Lord Rochester. 
 
 Duke of Norfolk. 
 
 Miss Mary Grafton. 
 
 Miss Stewart. 
 
 Host of the Stag's Horn Tavern. 
 
THE BLACK TULIP. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 The 20th of August, 1672, was by no means the first 
 occasion on which the Dutch had demonstrated their 
 claim to the very highest rank among ungrateful 
 peoples. 
 
 Witness the pathetic figure of the " Great 
 Deliverer," the first William of Orange, fighting 
 almost single-handed the whole mighty power of 
 Philip IL, and standing alone amid the jealous 
 envy of those whose release from a hateful, gall- 
 ing despotism was his only purpose in life. He 
 founded the Dutch Republic in spite of his fellow- 
 countrymen, rather than in concert with them ; and 
 it was not until the hand of the paid assassin 
 struck him down that they knew how truly he 
 had been the " Father William " of them and their 
 country. 
 
 Who that has read in Motley's engrossing 
 pages the story of John of Olden-Barneveldt has 
 not been lost in wonder (and in disgust) at the 
 blind, unreasoning spirit of jealousy and distrust, 
 
84 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 which persistently thwarted the earnest, devoted, 
 single-hearted efforts of that great-souled man, which 
 accused him, of all men on earth, of treachery and 
 subserviency to the enemies of the Eepublic, and 
 which finally inflicted upon him the most shameful 
 of all deaths, — death upon the gallows ? 
 
 The fate of Olden-Barneveldt emphasizes, more 
 strongly than any other single circumstance, that 
 characteristic of the Dutch, which has always made 
 it impossible for them to reap the full benefit of the 
 lessons which they have taught to other nations by 
 their persistent, self-sacrificing heroism. 
 
 The later exemplification of the same character- 
 istic in the scene described in the opening chapters 
 of "The Black Tulip" was only the less striking 
 in so far as the services of the De Witts to the 
 Eepublic had been less eminent and noteworthy 
 than those of Barneveldt, whose lot it was to live 
 at a more momentous epoch. 
 
 As in the earlier period the great Pensionary fell 
 a victim to the machinations of Prince Maurice of 
 Orange, or of those who used his revered name 
 as a cloak for their designs, while they scattered 
 broadcast the charge that Barneveldt was engaged 
 in secret and traitorous negotiations with Spain, 
 that is to say, with the power, against which his 
 whole life was one long tireless struggle: so were 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 85 
 
 the De Witts sacrificed to the youthful ambition 
 of another Prince of Orange, who allowed himself 
 to be made the tool of the envious detractors of 
 the patriotic brothers, so far as to give at least 
 his silent assent to the pitiless persecution which 
 ended so fatally. The subsequent career of this 
 prince upon the English throne did much to efface 
 this blot upon his fame. 
 
 The passionate fondness of this same people for 
 the peaceful art of floriculture and the historical 
 Harlem tulip craze furnished M. Dumas with a 
 congenial theme, which, interwoven with the inci- 
 dent of the deposit with the innocent tulip-fancier 
 of the Grand Pensionary's correspondence with the 
 awe-inspiring Court of Prance, was worked over 
 by the matchless story-teller into the romance of 
 "The Black Tulip." 
 
THE BLACK TULIP. 
 
 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 Period, 1672-1675. 
 
 William, Prince of Orange, afterward William III. King of 
 
 England. 
 Louis XIV., King of France. 
 
 Cornelius de Witt, inspector of dikes at the Hague. 
 John de Witt, his brother, Grand Pensionary of Holland. 
 Colonel van Deken, aide-de-camp to William of Orange. 
 Dr. Cornelius van Baerle, a tulip-fancier, godson of Cornelius 
 
 de Witt. 
 Mynheer Isaac Boxtel, his rival. 
 Marquis de Louvois. 
 
 Count Tilly, Captain of the Cavalry of the Hague. 
 Mynheer Bowelt, ) d ^ 
 Mynheer d'Asperen, ) 
 The Recorder of the States. 
 Master van Spenser, a magistrate at Dort. 
 Tyckalaer, a surgeon at the Hague. 
 Gerard Dow. 
 Mynheer van Systens, Burgomaster of Harlem and President 
 
 of its Horticultural Society. 
 Craeke, confidential servant of John de Witt. 
 Gryphus, a jailer. 
 Rosa, his daughter, in love with Cornelius van Baerle. 
 
LE 
 
 CHEVALIER D'HARMENTAL. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 The eight years from the death of Louis XIV., in 
 1715, to the legal majority of his great-grandson 
 and successor, Louis XV., in 1723, exhibited a state 
 of affairs in France corresponding very closely with 
 that which existed in England after the Restoration 
 of 1660, — when the natural reaction from the 
 supremacy of the pleasure-hating, psalm-singing 
 saints of the Commonwealth carried the nation 
 to hitherto unheard-of excesses in the opposite 
 direction. 
 
 During the last thirty years of the reign of the 
 "Grand Monarque," piety had come to be the 
 fashion at the French Court, of which Madame de 
 Maintenon, the king's unacknowledged wife, was 
 the true, though uncrowned, queen. 
 
 " Louis XIV., in his old age, became religious," 
 says Macaulay in one of his critical essays ; " he 
 determined that his subjects should be religious, 
 too ; he shrugged his shoulders and knitted his 
 brows if he observed at his levee or near his 
 
90 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 dinner-table any gentleman who neglected the 
 duties enjoined by the Church, and rewarded 
 piety with blue ribbons, invitations to Marly, 
 governments, pensions, and regiments. Forthwith 
 Versailles became, in everything but dress, a con- 
 vent. The pulpits and confessionals were sur- 
 rounded by swords and embroidery. The Marshals 
 of France were much in prayer; and there was 
 hardly one among the dukes and peers who did 
 not carry good little books in his pocket, fast dur- 
 ing Lent, and communicate at Easter. Madame de 
 Maintenon, who had a great share in the blessed 
 work, boasted that devotion had become quite the 
 fashion." 
 
 But Louis XIV. died. His will was treated 
 with scant ceremony by the Parliament of Paris ; 
 his legitimized sons were pulled down from the 
 height to which he, with the cordial approval of 
 their former governess, Madame de Maintenon, had 
 elevated them ; and Philippe, Due d'Orle'ans, whose 
 private morals were the very antithesis of all that 
 had been held in high esteem at court for a gene- 
 ration, was placed at the head of the government 
 during the minority of the young king. 
 
 The many excellent qualities of the regent were 
 overshadowed, in his own day as they have been 
 for posterity, by the shameless profligacy of his life. 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 91 
 
 When the royal power, substantially unlimited, was 
 placed in his hands, the whole face of the court 
 changed; and unblushing debauchery succeeded to 
 the odor of sanctity which had so long filled the 
 nostrils of the courtiers. Madame de Maintenon 
 was discredited; Pere le Tellier, the bigoted con- 
 fessor of the late king, vanished from the public 
 gaze ; while those whose real or pretended piety 
 had led them to espouse the cause of the Due du 
 Maine as against the regent, had nothing to hope 
 for under the new administration. Add to this that 
 the father, mother, and brother of the child who 
 had become king had all died within a week of 
 one another some three years before ; that his own 
 life had been saved at the same time only by a 
 miracle, and that very many people, under the 
 guidance of a few who pretended to believe it, 
 honestly did believe that the Due d'Orle'ans was 
 responsible for all these casualties ; while the 
 throne of Spain was filled by a grandson of Louis 
 XIV., himself a candidate for the regency, bitterly 
 jealous of the regent, and an inevitable candidate 
 for the throne in case of the death of the sickly 
 child, whose life was supposed to be in hourly 
 danger. To be sure, by the terms of the Treaty of 
 Utrecht, Philippe V. solemnly renounced all claim 
 to the throne of France ; but the emptiness of such 
 
92 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 renunciations had been abundantly demonstrated 
 in the case of his great-grandmother, Anne of 
 Austria, wife of Louis XIII., and his grandmother, 
 Marie Thdrese, wife of Louis XIV.; and even Saint- 
 Simon, the most devoted of all the friends of the 
 regent, tells us in his Memoirs that if Louis XV. 
 had died he should have been obliged, tearfully 
 and with great regret, to espouse the cause of the 
 representative of the elder line. Under these cir- 
 cumstances, some sort of a plot against the govern- 
 ment of the regent was inevitable. The so-called 
 "Conspiracy of Cellamare,'' formed to carry out a 
 far-reaching scheme of the ambitious and restless 
 intriguer, Cardinal Alberoni, the all-powerful minister 
 of Philippe V., forms the ground-work upon which 
 Dumas has built the " Chevalier d'Harmental." 
 
 That the epithet " far-reaching" is not misapplied 
 to the scheme of the ex-bell-ringer of Parma, will 
 be apparent upon perusal of the objects he had in 
 view, which are set forth with fulness and accuracy 
 in the following pages ; but the denouement con- 
 tained many elements of burlesque. Indeed, despite 
 the undoubted earnestness of the Duchesse du 
 Maine and the poisoned pen of the atrabilious poet, 
 La Grange Chancel, the "Court" of Sceaux, with 
 its " Order of the Honey-Bee," was a burlesque in 
 itself, and the conspirators at the French end were 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 93 
 
 mere playthings in the hands of the clever and 
 unscrupulous Dubois. It is a curious fact that the 
 Duchess, who was a legitimate princess of the blood 
 (she and her sister were called " dolls of the blood " 
 in allusion to their diminutive size), was the life 
 and soul of a plot to elevate the late king's illegiti- 
 mate progeny over the heads of the legitimate 
 princes, while her husband, the principal beneficiary 
 of the plot, was very lukewarm in forwarding it. 
 and had to be continually urged on by her. It is 
 said that while Louis XIV. was at the point of 
 death, the Due du Maine persisted in neglecting 
 his own interests to devote himself to a translation 
 of Lucretius, so that his wife said to him contempt- 
 uously : " You will wake some fine morning to find 
 yourself a member of the Academy, and the Due 
 d'Orle'ans Eegent of France." 
 
 For the character of the Due du Maine it is 
 hard to feel any emotion but contempt ; while it is 
 equally hard to avoid feeling something like sym- 
 pathy for the perpetual disappointments of his 
 restless, intriguing little wife. Her character is 
 best studied in the extremely entertaining memoirs 
 of Mademoiselle de Launay, better known as Ma- 
 dame de Staal, but who must not be confounded 
 with the more celebrated Madame de Stael (born 
 Mademoiselle Necker) of the Revolutionary era. 
 
94 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. * 
 
 There is, indeed, no other source from which so 
 much information as to the inside workings of 
 the "Conspiracy of Cellamare" can be obtained. 
 " Little " de Launay was an extremely clever young 
 woman, and when the bubble burst, she abundantly 
 justified the confidence the conspirators had placed 
 in her discretion. It is evident from her own naive 
 disclosures that the old Abbe' Chaulieu was not the 
 only one of the " Knights of the Honey-Bee " who 
 offered love to her; but he was so old that his 
 ardent passion was a fair theme of gossip and 
 pleasantry. "The abbd often proposed to make 
 me handsome presents," she says, "in addition to 
 the incense he poured out at my feet. Being some- 
 what annoyed one day by his persistence in urging 
 me to accept a thousand pistoles, I said to him : 
 * As a mark of my gratitude for your generous offers 
 I give you this advice : don't make similar ones to 
 many women or you may find one who will take 
 you at your word.' ' Oh ! ' said he, ' I know whom 
 I am dealing with.' This naive response made me 
 laugh." 
 
 The finishing touch was put, to the exasperation 
 of Madame du Maine, by the outcome of the famous 
 Bed of Justice of August, 1718, which is referred to 
 by Dumas. Her appeals to Alberoni for a speedy 
 beginning of operations became frantic; and the 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 95 
 
 negotiations through Cellamare were rapidly draw- 
 ing to a point, when Dubois thought fit to show his 
 hand, and the farce was at an end. That the 
 brewing of the conspiracy had long been known to 
 Dubois admits of little doubt ; the circumstances 
 which immediately led to the pricking of the 
 bubble have been variously related. 
 
 Voltaire (Precis du Siecle de Louis XV.) gives 
 the credit of putting Dubois upon the scent to La 
 Fillon, "a courtesan who had risen from the lowest 
 slums to become a celebrated procuress. She had 
 long been in the pay of Dubois, who had recently 
 become Secretary for Foreign Affairs." As told by 
 Voltaire, the responsibility for the premature dis- 
 closure rests with the Abbe' de Porto-Carrero, an 
 attach^ of the Spanish Embassy and an habitue' 
 of the establishment of La Fillon, where certain 
 papers were filched from him as he was on the 
 point of setting out for Spain. The papers were 
 handed over to Dubois, by whose orders Porto- 
 Carrero was pursued and overtaken at Poitiers. 
 All his papers were seized, with the result de- 
 scribed by Dumas. The Fillon incident is rejected 
 by M. Henri Martin, but is accepted by Michelet ; 
 it is mentioned in all the contemporary memoirs, 
 too ; and as Voltaire was in Paris at the time, there 
 seems to be good reason to believe that it rests 
 
96 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 upon a foundation of fact. There is also excellent 
 authority for the Buvat incident, substantially as 
 here related. Jean Buvat was a clerk at the Biblio- 
 theque, who eked out his very slender pay by 
 copying. He was .the author of certain memoirs 
 which exist only in manuscript, but are deemed of 
 much value by historical writers, especially as to 
 the exciting scenes incident to the rise and progress 
 of the "Mississippi" scheme and the financial "sys- 
 tem " of John Law. 
 
 The customary accuracy of the gifted author, 
 both in the delineation of character and the rela- 
 tion of incident, is to be noted in the " Chevalier 
 d'Harmental." With the exception of the hero 
 himself and Bathilde, and the scenes which deal 
 with their mutual attachment, hardly a person is 
 mentioned who was not a prominent figure of the 
 time ; hardly an event, however trivial, is referred 
 to which did not actually happen. 
 
 In Madame de Staal-de Launay's entertaining 
 pages, we meet Malezieux, Brigaud, Pompadour, 
 Baron de Yalef (Walef), the Comte de Laval, and 
 "le beau Cardinal de Polignac," who continued to 
 conspire for many years afterward whenever he 
 saw a chance. 
 
 During the first three quarters of the eighteenth 
 century, there was no time when Richelieu, the 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 97 
 
 fribble, failed to occupy a prominence which was 
 as absurd as it was humiliating to the court which 
 permitted it. While he was confined in the Bastille 
 (for the third time) for his idiotic share in the 
 Cellamare affair, he was visited by two royal prin- 
 cesses, disguised as laundresses, — Mademoiselle de 
 Charolais, a descendant of the great Conde', and 
 Mademoiselle de Valois, the regent's daughter. The 
 latter was finally married to the Duke of Modena 
 to remove her from the sphere of Eichelieu's in- 
 fluence. It is said that she voluntarily exposed 
 herself to infection from the small-pox to escape 
 the distasteful match; but she was at last com- 
 pelled to leave France. She gave vent to her sen- 
 timents in the following punning verses : — 
 
 " J'epouse un des plus petits princes, 
 Maitre des tres-petits etats, 
 Quatre desquels ne vaudraient pas 
 Une de nos moindres provinces. 
 Nul jeu : finance tres-petite : 
 Quelle difference, grand Dieu 1 
 Entre ce triste et pauvre lieu, 
 Et le riche lieu que je quitte ! " 
 
 It should perhaps be noticed that the author has 
 somewhat ante-dated the elevation of Dubois to the 
 archbishopric of Cambrai, which did not actually 
 take place until 1720. The necessary preliminaries 
 to his elevation, arising from the facts that he was 
 
98 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 not in holy orders and was a married man, were 
 accomplished as described. The Comte de Noce\ 
 who stood closest to the regent of all the roues, 
 said to him, apropos of this appointment : " What ! 
 That man Archbishop of Cambrai ! Why, you told 
 me yourself that he was a miserable, worthless, 
 unbelieving dog." 
 
 "So he is," said the regent, "and that's just 
 the reason why I have made the appointment; 
 when he's an archbishop he will have to go to 
 communion." 
 
 While there is much in the character of the Due 
 d'Orldans which merits the severest condemnation 
 and little to command actual respect, his vices were 
 after all those of a deplorably weak rather than a 
 wicked man. It can fairly be said that he never 
 purposely injured a human being ; and history fur- 
 nishes ample justification for relieving the gloomy 
 picture of his slavish subserviency to his own 
 passions and to -the will of his crafty minister and 
 ex-preceptor, by ascribing to him such generous 
 deeds as that with which this story closes. 
 
LE 
 
 CHEVALIER D'HARMENTAL. 
 
 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 Period, 1718. 
 
 Louis XV. s at the age of nine. 
 
 Philippe, Due d'Orleans, his uncle, the Regent of France. 
 
 Duchesse d'Orleans, his wife. 
 
 Madame Elizabeth Charlotte, Princess Palatine, the 
 
 Regent's mother. 
 Duchesse de Berri, 
 Louise-Adelaide d'Orleans, 
 
 Mademoiselle de Chartres, 
 
 r > the Regent s 
 
 Mademoiselle Aglae de v alois, V j o-hter 
 
 Princess Louise, afterward Queen of Spain, 
 
 Mademoiselle Elizabeth, afterward Duch- 
 esse de Lorraine, 
 
 Abbe Dubois, the Regent's Minister of State. 
 
 Andre Hercule de Fleury, Archbishop of Frejus, preceptor 
 to the young King. 
 
 Madame de Maintenon. 
 
 Duke of Berwick, Lieutenant- General of the French armies. 
 
 Adrien Maurice, Due de Noailles, President of the Council 
 of Finance. 
 
 Marechal d'Uxelles, President of the Council of Foreign 
 Affairs. 
 
 Due d'Antin, Superintendent of Ships. 
 
 Bishop of Troyes. 
 
 Bishop of Nantes. 
 
 M. de Launay, Governor of the Bastille. 
 
100 
 
 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 
 gentlemen of the French 
 Court. 
 
 Prince de Conde, 
 
 Louis Henri, Due de Bourbon, 
 
 Due de Saint-Simon, 
 
 Louis Alexandre de Bourbon, 
 
 Comte de Toulouse, 
 Due de Laforce, 
 Chevalier de Ravanne, 
 Marquis de Lavrilliere, 
 Marquis" d'Effiat, 
 Marquis de Torcy, 
 Marechal de Villars, 
 Marechal d'Estrees, 
 Marechal de Bezons, 
 Marquis de Canillac, 
 Chevalier de Simiane, 
 Comte de Eargy, 
 Due de Guiche, 
 Comte de Noce, 
 Due de Brancas, 
 Marquis de Broglie, 
 Marquis de Parabere, 
 Comte de Gage, 
 M. Leblanc, 
 Messire Voyer d'Argenson, Lieutenant of Police. 
 Marquis de Lafare, Captain of the Guards. 
 Monsieur d'Artagnan, Captain of the Gray Musketeers. 
 Marquis de Sabran, maitre-d'-hotel to the Regent. 
 Marquise de Parabere, 
 
 DUCHESSE DE EaLARIS, 
 
 Madame Sophie d'Averne, 
 
 Marquise de Sabran, 
 
 Mademoiselle Saleri, 
 
 Madame de Tencin, 
 
 Mademoiselle de Charolais. 
 
 Madame de Mouchy, lady of honor to Ducliesse de Berri. 
 
 Madame de Pons, tire-woman to Ducliesse de Berri. 
 
 ladies of the French Court. 
 
LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 
 101 
 
 Philip V. of Spain, 
 
 Cardinal Alberoni, 
 
 Monsieur le Due du Maine, son of Louis 
 
 XIV. and Madame de Montespan, 
 Louise Benedicte de Conde, Duchesse du 
 
 Maine, 
 Cardinal Melchior de Polignac, 
 Louis Francois Armand du Plessis, Due 
 
 de Richelieu, 
 Marquis de Pompadour, 
 Monsieur de Malezieu, Chancellor of 
 
 Dombes and Lord of Chatenay, 
 Prince de Cellamere, the Spanish Am- 
 bassador, 
 Marechal de Villeroy, 
 Mademoiselle Sophie de Launay, 
 Comte de Laval, 
 Joseph de Lagrange-Chancel, a satirical 
 
 poet, 
 M. de Saint-Genest, a poet, 
 Abbe de Chaulieu, 
 M. de Saint- Aulaire, 
 M. Antoine de Chastellux, 
 Madame la Marechale de Villeroy, 
 Madame de Chanost, 
 Madame de Brissac, 
 Madame de Rohan, 
 Madame de Croissy, 
 D'Avranches, valet-de-chambre to Madame 
 
 du Maine, 
 Abbe Brigaud, 
 M. de Bessac, an ensign in the Guards of 
 
 Due du Maine, 
 Chevalier Baoul d'Harmental, in love 
 
 with Bathilde, 
 Baron Rene de Valef, his friend, 
 
 conspirators 
 • against the Re- 
 gent. 
 
102 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 
 Cauchereau, a tenor of the Academie Royal, favorite of 
 
 Mademoiselle de Chartres. 
 Monsieur de Riom, favorite of La Duchesse de Berri. 
 Mademoiselle Bury, of the Opera. 
 
 Albert du Rocher, an officer in the service of Due d'Orleans. 
 Clarice du Rocher, his wife. 
 
 Bathilde, their daughter, in love with the Chevalier d'Harmental. 
 Jean Buvat, an employee in the government library. 
 Monsieur Ducondray, his colleague. 
 Nanette, Bathilde's servant. 
 MaItre Durand, a restaurant-keeper. 
 Raffe, valet-de-chambre to M. le Due de Richelieu. 
 Bourguinon, | b the seryice of the Abb6 Duboig> 
 
 COMTOIS, J 
 
 Madame Denis, a lodging-house keeper. 
 
 Mademoiselle £milie, j her daughters> 
 
 Mademoiselle Athenaise, ) 
 
 Boniface Denis, her son. 
 
 Monsieur Fremond, a lodger at the house of Madame Denis. 
 
 La Fillon. 
 
 La Normandie. 
 
 Captain Roquefinette, an adventurer. 
 
THE REGENT'S DAUGHTER. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 When the Conspiracy of Cellamare, which forms 
 the main theme of the "Chevalier d'Harmental," 
 was exposed, or when the Abbe' Dubois thought 
 fit to put an end to it, the Duchesse du Maine 
 was condemned by the regent to undergo imprison- 
 ment in the Chateau of Dijon. In due course of 
 time her longing to renew the glories of her own 
 little court at Sceaux made her enforced sojourn 
 in the provinces extremely irksome to her, and she 
 purchased her liberty by making a full disclosure 
 of the names of all who had been cognizant of, or 
 privy to, the negotiations with Alberoni, as repre- 
 senting the Court of Spain. It thus became known 
 to the authorities that the main reliance of the 
 conspirators for active support had been the prov- 
 ince of Bretagne. These disclosures threw much 
 light upon certain symptoms of disaffection which 
 had appeared in that province, whose people seemed 
 almost to form a race apart from those of other 
 
104 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 portions of the kingdom. It turned out that the 
 resistance of the States of Bretagne to the orders 
 of the royal governor was but a cover for continued 
 negotiations with Spain, looking toward a perma- 
 nent separation of Bretagne from France. The 
 States at last declared the province independent 
 because its privileges had been invaded ; and the 
 standard of rebellion was thus boldly displayed. 
 The progress and crisis of the revolt are described 
 with sufficient fidelity to truth in these pages. The 
 name of Gaston de Chanlay is the only one of 
 the five which has no place in an absolutely 
 accurate record of the scene in the public square 
 of Nantes, at midnight of a certain tempestuous 
 night in March, 1720. 
 
 "To this day," says Dumas, in one of his 
 strictly historical works, " La Eegence," " in the 
 very heart of Bretagne, at Saint-Malo, at Lorient, at 
 Villeneuve, at Brest or Finisterre, one finds in the 
 poorest huts portraits of Talhouet, Pontcalec, Mont- 
 louis, and Du Couedic handed down from father 
 to son. And when you ask your hosts, the occu- 
 pants of these huts, who these men are whose 
 features they preserve so devoutly, in their trustful 
 ignorance some will reply : ' They are saints ; ' 
 others, 'They are martyrs.'" 
 
 The scenes between the regent and Dubois are 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 105 
 
 particularly interesting, because they mark so 
 sharply the contrast between the regent's natural 
 disposition to leniency ancl mercy — even, perhaps 
 most of all, to those whose blows were aimed at 
 his own person or power — and the facility with 
 which he yielded to the representations of his 
 mentor, whose hold upon his mind and will grew 
 stronger day by day until the end. 
 
 The Due d'Orldans has been fortunate in this, 
 that the virtues which he did possess — large- 
 hearted generosity, unfailing kindness and courtesy 
 to his inferiors, and intense affection for his chil- 
 dren, whether born in or out of wedlock — have 
 seldom failed to arouse emotions distinctly resem- 
 bling sympathy for one whose vices, though of 
 monumental proportions, were those of the age in 
 which he lived, and whose life was embittered 
 by cruel, unmerited accusations of having caused 
 the untimely deaths of the Due and Duchesse de 
 Bourgogne and the Due de Bretagne, — the father, 
 mother, and brother of the young king. It is 
 always to be remembered to his credit that he 
 watched with unfailing care and affection over the 
 well-being of the royal child, whose hold upon 
 life was always feeble and uncertain, and who 
 alone stood between him and what was still one 
 of the most exalted thrones of Christendom. 
 
106 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 The regent was not fortunate in his legitimate 
 daughters. The career of the Duchesse de Berri 
 is revolting and saddening in the extreme, even 
 although we are told by one of the contemporary- 
 memoir- writers that a post-mortem examination 
 revealed the fact that she was "crack-brained." 
 The convent life of the Abbess of Chelles was 
 little short of scandalous; while the matrimonial 
 bickerings of Mademoiselle de Valois and her 
 husband, the Duke of Modena, were of European 
 notoriety. A fourth daughter became the wife of 
 the Prince of Asturias, and was Queen of Spain 
 for the few months which intervened between the 
 absurd abdication of Philippe V. and the death of 
 her husband. Her leading characteristics were an 
 extremely morose disposition, and personal habits 
 slovenly in the extreme ; and her Spanish subjects 
 seized the first convenient pretext to send her back 
 to France, and were very remiss in remitting her 
 allowance. The youngest of all, Mademoiselle de 
 Beaujolais, was the only one who combined good 
 morals with an attractive personality, and she died 
 of a broken heart almost before she was out of 
 her teens. 
 
 The memoirs of Madame de Staal-de Launay 
 furnish abundant authority for the entertaining 
 description given by Dumas of the life led by 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 107 
 
 the conspirators in the Bastille. The author of 
 the memoirs was decidedly heartless in her treat- 
 ment of poor Maison-Eouge, the lieutenant of the 
 fortress, whose ardent passion for herself she piti- 
 lessly used as a means of forwarding her love 
 affair with the Chevalier de Mesnil. The following 
 passage is illustrative of the skill with which she 
 kept two strings to her bow ; and at the same time 
 it enlightens us still further as to the diversions 
 in which these fortunate prisoners were allowed 
 to indulge. 
 
 "One day when he (Maison-Eouge) was taking 
 supper with me, Mesnil, who had found a way of 
 opening the door of his room, came and listened 
 at my door. He claimed that I was very gay and 
 lively, and that I had spoken of him with insulting 
 levity. But he was even more put out because,, 
 when we left the table, we went to the window, 
 the weather being extremely warm. There the 
 lieutenant suggested that I should sing, and I 
 began a scene from the opera of " Iphige'nie." 
 The Due de Eichelieu, who was at his window, 
 sang the reply of Orestes, which fitted in very 
 nicely with our situation. Maison-Eouge, who 
 thought that it entertained me, allowed us to 
 sing the scene through. It was by no means 
 entertaining to the Chevalier de Mesnil. The 
 
108 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 next day he questioned me in his letter about the 
 supper, at which I had no idea that he had been 
 a listener. I did not remember that his name 
 had been mentioned between us, so I said nothing 
 about it to him. This seemed to him to import 
 some secret understanding between Maison-Eouge 
 and myself, and he was so enraged that he insisted 
 upon my breaking with the lieutenant. I at last 
 succeeded, however, in making him understand how 
 excessively inconvenient that would be for our 
 affairs, and he cooled down." 
 
 Messire Voyer d'Argenson, an excellent lieu- 
 tenant of police transformed into a very mediocre 
 keeper of the seals, subjected Mademoiselle de 
 Launay to an inquisitory ordeal very similar to 
 that undergone at his hands by Gaston de Chanlay ; 
 and the versatile femme de chambre acquitted her- 
 self with no less skill and discretion than was 
 exhibited by the Breton hero. M. d'Argenson is 
 an interesting figure of the period, no less in his 
 own right than as the father of two sons, each 
 of whom made an honorable name in high office 
 under Louis XV. The Marquis owes his greatest 
 fame, however, to his very entertaining and valu- 
 able memoirs of the first thirty years of the reign. 
 
 When Madame du Maine was at last allowed 
 to return to Sceaux, she found assembled there. 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 109 
 
 Pompadour, Laval, Malezieux, and Mademoiselle 
 de Launay. "Waiting," says Dumas, "to recom- 
 mence those delightful entertainments which poor, 
 blind Chaulieu, who could not see them, used to 
 call " les nuits blanches de Sceaux.'' 
 
 It is, perhaps, mere supererogation to repeat 
 what has been said so often of others of M. Dumas' 
 romances, — that contemporary authority can be 
 cited for every anecdote or incident not directly 
 connected with the distinctively romantic portions 
 of the narrative. 
 
 The Princess Palatine's pleasantry as to the 
 gifts of the fairies to her son at his birth is told 
 by Saint-Simon and Duclos, as is the anecdote of 
 the same out-spoken lady's very forcible expression 
 of her displeasure when her son's contemplated 
 marriage was announced to her. Saint-Simon, 
 again, and the Marquis d'Argenson agree in affirm- 
 ing that Dubois had the temerity to demand a 
 nomination to the Sacred College from Louis XIV. 
 as a reward for his potent assistance in bringing 
 about that marriage. This latter anecdote is dis- 
 credited, however, by a very recent writer, 1 who 
 has undertaken, with what measure of success it 
 does not concern us to inquire, to clear away some 
 
 1 James Breck Perkins, in " France Under the Regency," 
 etc. 
 
110 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 of the odium with which Dubois has been sur- 
 rounded from his death to the present day. 
 
 The assumption of queenly pomp by the mad 
 Duchesse de Berri, as well as her secret marriage 
 with Eiom, are equally well authenticated. The 
 wrath of the Princess Palatine at this nisalliance 
 was far more violent than that of the culprit's 
 father, who certainly was indulgent to a fault. 
 The severity with which Kiom was treated was 
 due to the outcry of the. grandmother, rather than 
 to the outraged dignity of the father. 
 
 There is, alas, no doubt that the regent's daily 
 avocations and distractions are faithfully described 
 in the course of this narrative. Saint-Simon, his 
 chief apologist, deplores the fact which he cannot 
 explain away, except by putting the blame upon 
 the shoulders of Dubois ; but the generous impulse 
 to which D'Orldans is made to yield when he 
 pardons De Chanlay, whose avowed object was to 
 compass his death, is no less characteristic of the 
 unfortunate prince, of whom the same apologist, 
 who was also his dearest friend, said long after 
 his death that his character was an enigma which 
 he had never been able to solve. 
 
THE REGENT'S DAUGHTER. 
 
 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 
 Period, 1719. 
 
 Philippe, Due d'Orleans, Regent of France. 
 
 Madame Elizabeth Charlotte, Princess Palatine, his 
 
 mother. 
 Duchesse d'Orleans, his wife. 
 
 DUCHESSE DE BeRRI, 1 
 
 Mademoiselle de Chartres, Abbess of Chelles, LWgMsrs of 
 
 Mademoiselle de Valois, J the Re S ent - 
 
 Louis, the Regent's son. 
 
 Abbe Dubois, Minister of State. 
 
 Helene de Chaverny, a natural daughter of the Regent, in 
 
 love with Gaston de Chanlay. 
 Due de St. Simon, "\ 
 
 Marquis de Broglie, 
 
 Chevalier de Slmiane, 
 
 M. de Biron, 
 
 M. de Mouchy, 
 
 Marquis de Lafare, Captain of the Regent's Guards. 
 
 Marquis de la Vrilliere, ) of the ^^ 
 
 M. de Leblanc, ) 
 
 Messire Voyer d'Argenson, Lieutenant of Police 
 
112 
 
 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 
 prisoners in the Bastille. 
 
 M. de Launay, Governor of the Bastille. 
 
 M. de Maison-Rouge, his Lieutenant. 
 
 Due de Richelieu, 
 
 Marquis de Pompadour, 
 
 Comte de Laval, 
 
 M. de Malezieux, 
 
 Abbe Brigaud, 
 
 Chevalier Dumesnil, 
 
 Mademoiselle Sophie de Launay, . 
 
 Cauchereau, music-master to Mademoiselle de Chartres. 
 
 Chevalier de Riom, married to Duchesse de Berri. 
 
 Comte de Noce, a friend of the Regent. 
 
 Cardinal Alberoni. 
 
 Due d'Olivares, a Spanish agent. 
 
 Gaston de Chanlay, in love with Helena 
 
 Marquis de Pontcalec, 
 
 m. de montlouis, 
 
 M. du Couedic, 
 
 M. de Talhouet, 
 
 Captain la Jonquiere, 
 
 Marquis de Guer, uncle of Marquis de Pontcalec. 
 
 Sire de Pontcalec. 
 
 The Sorceress op Savenay. 
 
 Baron de Caradec 
 
 M. de Montarau, intendent of the Province of Bretagne 
 
 Marechal de Montesquiou, commanding at Bretagne. 
 
 M. de Chateauneuf. 
 
 La Souris, the Regent's favorite. 
 
 Julie, the mistress of Dubois. 
 
 Chevalier de M . 
 
 Madame Ursule, Superior of the Ursulines at Clisson. 
 Sister Therese, of the Ursulines. 
 Madame Desroches, in the Regent's Service. 
 Bourguignon, landlord of the Hotel " Muid d'Amour." 
 La Jonciere, a smuggler. 
 
 conspirators 
 against the Re- 
 gent's life. 
 
LIST OF CHAKACTEHS. 113 
 
 La Jonquille, sergeant in the French Guards. 
 
 Grippart, ) soldiers _ 
 
 L'Enlevant, ) 
 
 Oven, Gaston de Chanlay's servant. 
 
 -r tI IN ' I i n the service of Dubois. 
 
 L Eveille, S 
 
 Christopher, a jailer at Nantes. 
 
 Lamer, the executioner. 
 
MEMOIRS OF A PHYSICIAN. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 The leading events of the last years of the long 
 and disastrous reign of Louis XV. are described in 
 these volumes with the author's accustomed accu- 
 racy and fulness of detail. During those years 
 the unhappy kingdom of France seems to have 
 taken its longest strides towards the end which 
 keen observers had long seen to be inevitable. 
 
 In " Olympe de Cleves " we have seen the king, 
 young, handsome, and nattered, hesitating on the 
 threshold of the career of debauchery into which 
 his intriguing courtiers, with the assent if not the 
 co-operation of the all-powerful minister and for- 
 mer preceptor, Fleury, were striving to force him 
 for their own selfish ends. In these Memoirs of 
 Balsamo, we are shown the deplorable close of that 
 career half a century later. During that half- 
 century — the " period of the Decadence of the 
 Monarchy," it has been called by Monsieur Henri 
 Martin — the people of France, groaning beneath 
 the weight of extortion and oppression, had seen 
 
116 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 the prevailing luxury and extravagance of the court 
 increase in proportion as their own burdens grew. 
 Rapacious mistresses, each with her following of 
 greedy sycophants and relatives, had succeeded one 
 another with scarcely a breathing space between ; 
 costly and disastrous wars had been waged to 
 gratify their whims or to avenge real or fancied 
 slights put upon them. Small wonder that he who 
 had been greeted on his return from the brilliant 
 but unproductive victory of Fontenoy with the 
 title of Louis le Bien-Aime' (the Well-beloved), had 
 come to be the most hated and despised man in the 
 realm. 
 
 It is interesting to observe the steady degenera- 
 tion (if we may use the word) in social standing 
 of the successive favorites of Louis XV. 
 
 The three sisters De Nesle — Madame de Mailly, 
 Madame de Vintimille, and the Duchesse de 
 Chateauroux — were scions of one of the most 
 venerable families in France, and could trace their 
 lineage back to the twelfth century. To be sure 
 their immediate progenitors were of decidedly 
 unsavory character, but such considerations were 
 of slight importance to a generation which was the 
 direct heir of the traditions of the Eegency. To 
 Madame de Chateauroux succeeded Jeanne Antoi- 
 nette Poisson, daughter of a commissary's clerk, 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 117 
 
 and wife of a rich farmer-general's nephew and 
 heir, — that is to say, a typical representative of the 
 bourgeoisie, or middle, class. For twenty years 
 this minister in petticoats, created Marquise de 
 Pompadour, ruled the kingdom of France over the 
 shoulders of its weak and dissolute monarch. That 
 she was utterly unscrupulous as to the means she 
 employed to maintain her ascendency, the infamous 
 invention of the Pare aux Cerfs is, in itself, suf- 
 ficient proof. 
 
 Frederick the Great sneeringly called her " Cotil- 
 lon II. ; " but Maria Theresa wrote her a letter in 
 which she called her " my dear cousin." So small 
 a matter as this decided the policy of France at a 
 critical period : Madame de Pompadour declared 
 in favor of alliance with Austria, the " Seven 
 Years' War " ensued, and France was despoiled of 
 her colonial possessions, and left practically help- 
 less at the mercy of her enemies. 
 
 She it was who " made " Choiseul, and established 
 his influence and authority upon so firm a founda- 
 tion that her death left him the supreme power in 
 the kingdom. Past experience had taught the les- 
 son that he could be dislodged in no other way than 
 by the accession of a new favorite, and any hopes 
 which may have arisen in the hearts of those who 
 really desired to see an end of the regime of shame 
 
118 INTKODUCTOKY NOTE. 
 
 and scandal which had endured so long, were des- 
 tined to be short-lived. 
 
 The versions of the story are so numerous and 
 conflicting that it is impossible — and perhaps 
 unimportant — to say with certainty who is enti- 
 tled to the doubtful honor of having brought about 
 the first meeting between the king and the young 
 woman whose career under the name of the Com- 
 tesse du Barry is one of the most remarkable in 
 history. There is no doubt, however, as to the 
 antecedents of the young woman in question, or 
 that when Louis XV. raised her to the shameful 
 eminence which Madame de Pompadour had last 
 occupied, he reached the lowest point in the social 
 scale, and selected a true daughter of the people. 
 
 She was born in the little provincial town of Vau- 
 couleurs in .1743, and was the illegitimate child of 
 one Anne Be^u. Her early history may be read in 
 many places ; nowhere perhaps is it told more con- 
 cisely or interestingly than by MM. de Goncourt 
 (in " La du Barry "). Being thrown entirely on her 
 own resources in the streets of Paris, whither her 
 mother had been driven by poverty, possessed of 
 extraordinary personal attractions, and with very 
 lax ideas on the subject of female virtue, her story 
 is not an edifying one. She fell at last into the 
 hands of Comte Jean du Barry, a native of Toulouse 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 119 
 
 who had lived many years at Paris, and whose 
 career of heedless, cynical, and unbridled licentious- 
 ness and debauchery — noteworthy, even in those 
 days — had won for him the title of the Eoue. She 
 had meanwhile taken the name of Eauc,on, — her 
 mother having married one of that name, — and 
 had subsequently adopted the nom-de-guerre of 
 Mademoiselle Lange. 
 
 The attachment between the blase comte and the 
 beautiful courtesan soon became one of interest 
 solely, and as it came toDu Barry's knowledge that 
 the enemies of the Due de Choiseul were seeking to 
 fill the void which Madame de Pompadour's death 
 had left in the king's affections, he conceived the 
 idea of putting forward La Lange as a fit candidate. 
 
 In some way or other the agency of Lebel, the 
 king's confidential valet, was made use of, and the 
 discarded mistress of the Eoue was placed where 
 the eye of royalty would fall upon her. There 
 seems to have been little thought, except in the 
 mind of Du Barry, that the result would be anything 
 more than the passing fancy of a day ; but the im- 
 pression made by the clever creature was not only 
 immediate, but gave such indubitable signs of hav- 
 ing come to stay that Lebel " was alarmed at the 
 unworthy attachment which seemed to have taken 
 full possession of the king's mind and heart. He 
 
120 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 informed his master that the woman who had been 
 brought to his notice was unmarried, and untitled, 
 and he thought it his duty to call the king's atten- 
 tion to the compromising results of any further ac- 
 quaintance with her. The king stopped him short, 
 told him to arrange a marriage for her at once, and, 
 when she was married, to bring her to Compiegne." 
 (De Goncourt.) 
 
 It is probable that Eichelieu, the ever young, 
 whom we have seen in the "Chevalier d'Har- 
 mental " and the " Eegent's Daughter," in the far-off 
 days of the regency while the king was yet in his 
 cradle, already a past master in gallantry, and add- 
 ing zest to his amatory pursuits by playing the part 
 of Harlequin in the burlesque called the " Con- 
 spiracy of Cellamare," and again, in " Olympe de 
 Cleves," with diplomatic honors thick upon him, 
 devoting his energies to the corruption of his youth- 
 ful sovereign, — it is probable, we say, that Eichelieu 
 was instrumental in bringing Mademoiselle Lange to 
 the king's notice. Throughout the reign of Louis XV. 
 this mock-conspirator, mock-soldier, and mock-states- 
 man, who never appeared in his true colors except 
 as a libertine and dabbler in petty intrigues, was 
 always at the ear of the king, pandering to the 
 tastes which he had done more than any other to 
 form, and fawning upon the favorite of the day, 
 
INTEODUCTOEY NOTE. 121 
 
 her subservient slave, — the king's evil genuis, in 
 very truth. 
 
 The picture of the cynical, heartless old rake 
 drawn by Dumas is one of the best of the many 
 admirable ones presented in these pages. 
 
 To return to the new favorite. Comte Jean du 
 Barry had a convenient brother, Guillaume, at Tou- 
 louse, who readily consented to a marriage which 
 required him to make no sacrifice of his liberty, and 
 provided a handsome allowance for his complai- 
 sance. A false registry of the bride's baptism was 
 manufactured, in which her birth was put back 
 three years to 1746, and she was represented to 
 have been born in wedlock of Anne Be^u, by her 
 husband, one Jean Jacques Gomard de Vaubernier. 
 The banns were published, the marriage ceremony 
 was performed, the groom returned to Toulouse, and 
 the bride went at once to Versailles, where she was 
 installed in the apartments lately occupied by the 
 king's daughter, Madame Adelaide. 
 
 Nothing need be added to Dumas's masterly 
 delineation of Madame du Barry's character and 
 conduct. There were very few among the great 
 ladies of the court whose horror at the spec- 
 tacle of a woman picked up from the street to be 
 placed over all their heads did not soon yield to 
 the necessity of being well with her. She brought 
 
122 INTEODUCTOEY NOTE. 
 
 to Versailles the manners and the slang of the local- 
 ities in which her life had been passed ; but it is 
 only fair to say that she showed such marvellous 
 power to adapt herself to her new surroundings 
 that it may safely be assumed that her lapses into 
 the slang of the brothel were intentional, because 
 she found that they amused the king. De Gon- 
 court relates that a continuous run of ill-luck at 
 the card-table drew from her the ejaculation, " Ah ! 
 je suis frite ! " (I am fried.) " We are bound to be- 
 lieve you, Madame," replied an ill-natured wit, gath- 
 ering in her stakes, "for you certainly ought to 
 know." This by way of allusion to the profes- 
 sion of her mother, who was cook to a celebrated 
 courtesan. 
 
 It is difficult to give any idea of the sums squan- 
 dered by Madame du Barry during her reign, ex- 
 cept by copious extracts from the voluminous docu- 
 ments detailing those sums which are deposited in 
 the " Bibliotheque Rationale." While she had not 
 the same longing for acquisitions of real property 
 which characterized Madame de Pompadour, she 
 more than made up for it by her purchases of 
 dresses and jewelry, pictures, sculpture, and the 
 like, the total of which amounted to many hun- 
 dreds of millions of francs. Few queens, indeed, 
 have ever been able to boast of such a collection of 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 123 
 
 jewels as those which were stolen from the favorite 
 on the 10th of January, 1791, — a theft which led 
 to her four voyages to England, and the consequent 
 accusations of emigration and of secret missions to 
 the foes of the Kepublic. 
 
 There is in the " Bibliotheque Rationale" a man- 
 uscript journal, written by one Hardy, a Parisian 
 of the middle class, called " Journal des eVenenients 
 tels qu'ils parviennent a ma connaissance " (Journal 
 of such facts as have come to my knowledge). The 
 following is one of the many entertaining bits of 
 gossip to be found therein. He says that a clerical 
 friend of his was dining out on the 1st of February, 
 1769, and was requested by a brother of the cloth 
 to drink " to the presentation." Hardy's friend 
 failed to understand what he meant, and asked if 
 he referred to the Presentation of our Lord at the 
 Temple, which was to be commemorated the fol- 
 lowing day. "No," said the priest who proposed 
 the toast, "I refer to that which will take place 
 to-day, if it did not come off yesterday — the presen- 
 tation of the new Esther, who is to supersede 
 Haman, and rescue the people of Israel from cap- 
 tivity." The new Esther was Madame du Barry, 
 and Haman, the Due de Choiseul, in this allegory. 
 
 Indeed, the breathless interest excited by this im- 
 portant function, which gave to the mere mistress 
 
124 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 the more stable character of favorite en titre, can 
 hardly be exaggerated. "Du Barry had unearthed a 
 Comtesse de Bdarn," says De Goncourt, " the widow 
 of a Perigord gentleman, who had left her in very 
 necessitous circumstances, with five children on her 
 hands, and a venerable lawsuit against the Saluces 
 family. He obtained for her an allowance which 
 made it possible for her to appear at Court in garb 
 suited to her position, and procured a judgment 
 favorable to her in her lawsuit, thereby making 
 sure of a sponsor." Even then, however, the func- 
 tion was delayed on one pretext or another : " the 
 Comtesse de Be'arn, dreading the effect of her com- 
 plaisance upon her future, at one time pretended 
 that she had sprained her ankle, and obstinately 
 kept to her sofa for some days ; " and it was not 
 until the 21st of April, 1769, that the long-looked- 
 for presentation took place. The delay which 
 occurred at the last moment is historical; it was 
 caused by the delinquency of a hair-dresser. 
 
 Choiseul, the bosom friend and confident of 
 Madame de Pompadour, could have been influenced 
 by no virtuous scruples in refusing to live on 
 terms of friendship with Madame du Barry. He 
 trusted too much to his established position, and to 
 the need which the king had of him, and rejected 
 the innumerable advances which were made to him 
 
INTEODUCTOKY NOTE. 125 
 
 on the part of the favorite, of whom it must be said 
 that politics was as uncongenial a field of activity 
 to her as it was a congenial one to Madame de 
 Pompadour. She desired to be friendly to the 
 Minister, and it was his overweening self-confi- 
 dence which drove her into the opposite faction, and 
 made her the tool of those who were opposed to all 
 that Choiseul represented. A strange sight it was 
 to see the woman of the street put forward by the 
 party of the devotees, — their real object being to 
 reinstate the Jesuits whom Madame de Pompadour 
 had driven out of France. Even the stern ascetic 
 Christophe de Beaumont, Archbishop of Paris, jug- 
 gled with his conscience to avoid offending the 
 favorite when Louis was on his death-bed. 
 
 Choiseul, on the other hand, was the representative 
 of the philosophers, the obstreperous Parliament, and 
 the Jansenists. In his exile at Chanteloupe he was 
 visited by vast numbers of his adherents, and the 
 greatest and noblest names in the kingdom were 
 inscribed upon the pillars there. " People were not 
 more virtuous," says Saint Amand, "but opposi- 
 tion was fashionable." 
 
 It may be said of Marie Antoinette, as of Choi- 
 seul, that the enmity between herself and the 
 favorite was not the fault of the latter. It would 
 not perhaps be surprising that the daughter of the 
 
126 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 Caesars should have disdained the lowly-born cour- 
 tesan, were it not that in so doing she was running 
 directly counter to the wishes and commands of 
 her mother, the politic Maria Theresa. The corres- 
 pondence of the Empress with Mercy-Argenteau, 
 her representative at the French Court, is copiously 
 cited by Saint Amand (Les Dernieres Anne'es de 
 Louis XV.). It is filled with emphatic expressions 
 of the necessity of her daughter's bowing to circum- 
 stances, and showing her respect for the king by 
 courteous treatment of those whom he loves. 
 
 It is, perhaps, needless to say that " Chon " is a 
 very real personage. She was Mademoiselle Claire 
 du Barry, sister of Comte Jean ; she was a great favo- 
 rite of her sister-in-law, and the guiding spirit of 
 the household. 
 
 Zamore, too, the little toy negro, was actually 
 made governor of Luciennes, and received the 
 emoluments pertaining to the governorship of a 
 royal chateau. It is not, however, as governor of 
 Luciennes that he won his most enduring fame, 
 but as the serpent who turned upon his benefactress 
 and rent her asunder. 
 
 When Louis XV. was dead of the smallpox, 
 Madame du Barry was exiled ; but it was only a 
 short time before Luciennes was restored to her by 
 the good-natured successor of her royal lover, and 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 127 
 
 there she lived until the Eevolution, during the last 
 years of tranquillity the very dearly loved mistress 
 of the Due de Cosse'-Brissac. In 1791 her jewels 
 were stolen, and she unwisely called public atten- 
 tion to the fact of her great wealth by offering a 
 reward of two thousand louis for their recovery. 
 The thieves were arrested in England, and she was 
 compelled to make four journeys across the channel 
 before she was able to recover them. The story of 
 the accusations made against her, as a sequel of 
 those voyages, is too long to be told here. All her 
 servants turned against her, and none more vindic- 
 tively than Zamore, who had become a zealous 
 republican. On the 8th of December, 1793, she 
 ascended the scaffold, and " looked through the lit- 
 tle window of la Guillotine," just fifty-three days 
 after the unhappy queen had lost her life on the 
 same spot. " The death of Madame du Barry cost 
 the conscience of the Terror a quarter of an hour 
 more than that of Marie Antoinette," says De Gon- 
 court. " It took the jury an hour and a quarter to 
 convict in the case of the favorite." 
 
 The "affair of La Chalotais," which is men- 
 tioned so frequently in connection with the Due 
 d'Aiguillon, arose out of the latter's incumbency of 
 the office of military commandant of Bretagne, dur- 
 ing one of the periodical revolts of the parliament 
 
128 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 of that restless province, which he had put down 
 with great severity. The English made a descent 
 upon the coast of Bretagne in 1758 ; D'Aiguillon 
 defeated them at Saint-Cast, and drove them aboard 
 their ships, but the Bretons claimed that the Due 
 was not entitled to any credit personally, and 
 accused him of hiding in a mill. 
 
 Some one remarked in the presence of Monsieur de 
 la Chalotais that " Monsieur d'Aiguillon covered him- 
 self with glory at the battle of Saint-Cast." 
 
 " With flour you mean," replied La Chalotais, who 
 was procureur-ge'neral of the parliament of Bretagne. 
 
 D'Aiguillon never forgave it, and seized the first 
 opportunity to prosecute La Chalotais for an alleged 
 plot to overthrow the monarchy. He was impris- 
 oned, and became at once the idol of the parlia- 
 ment, and eventually D'Aiguillon was replaced by 
 Due de Duras. 
 
 Guiseppe Balsamo, better known to fame as the 
 Count Cagliostro, under which name he appears in the 
 other romances of the Marie Antoinette cycle, was a 
 charlatan of extraordinary ability who made a great 
 stir in various European countries during the last 
 quarter of the eighteenth century. In his hands 
 free-masonry, which was then under the ban, became 
 a very powerful weapon, and he was much aided in 
 making dupes by his wife Lorenza Feliciani, a 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 129 
 
 woman of rare beauty, who was also a member of 
 the masonic fraternity. At one time or another he 
 seems to have claimed to possess most of the 
 powers which are here ascribed to him, and which 
 he attributed to the supernatural connections of 
 his master, Althotas, or Alhotas. His name is 
 known in French history for his relations with 
 the Cardinal de Eohan, and his consequent con- 
 nection with the wretched affair of the necklace, 
 which is the subject of the second of this series 
 of romances. 
 
 It will, perhaps, be more convenient to speak of 
 Marie Antoinette at length, in connection with that 
 episode which occurred after she had become queen, 
 and had begun to develop those traits of character 
 which came to the surface so many times, and 
 wrecked so many apparent opportunities of making 
 peace with the Eevolution. In this story we see 
 little of her that is not sweet and lovable. With- 
 out the gloomy predictions of Balsamo, she might 
 well shudder at the succession of evil omens which 
 welcomed her to France. The apartment which 
 was prepared for her reception on the island in the 
 Ehine where her Austrian escort delivered her to 
 the representatives of her adopted country, was 
 hung with tapestries representing the legend of 
 Jason, Medea, and Croesus. For this fact we have 
 
130 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 no less an authority than Goethe, who was then a 
 student at Strasbourg ; his reflections upon the 
 impropriety of such decoration under the circum- 
 stances were no less just than forcible. 
 
 The fearful storm which interfered with the cele- 
 bration at Versailles was fittingly capped by the 
 horrible slaughter in Paris the following night, 
 which is so graphically described by Dumas. The 
 Dauphiness was driving into Paris for the first 
 time to see the illuminations, when she was met 
 by intelligence of the disaster, and drove sadly back 
 to Versailles. 
 
 To one who has studied Eousseau in his own 
 " Confessions," the glimpses of the testy, suspicious 
 old philosophe are by no means the least attractive 
 portions of the book. 
 
 Although this story closes with the death of 
 Louis XV., fifteen years before the taking of the 
 Bastille, the introduction of Marat, the gloomy 
 and repulsive fanatic, and above all his reappear- 
 ance on the last page, give a distinct forecast of 
 what the future had in store. 
 
MEMOIRS OF A PHYSICIAN. 
 
 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 Period, 1770 to 1774. 
 
 Louis XV., King of France. 
 
 Marie Jeanne de Vaubernier, Comtesse Dubarry, his 
 
 mistress. 
 Louis Auguste, Due de Berry, the 
 
 Dauphiu, afterwards Louis XVI., I dsons of the Kin 
 comte dartois, 
 Comte de Provence, 
 Princess Louise de Prance, 
 Princess Adelaide, 
 Princess Yictoire, 
 Princess Sophie, 
 Due de Chartres, afterwards Philippe ^galite, Due d'Orleans. 
 Due de Choiseul, Prime Minister of Prance. 
 Maria Theresa, Empress of Austria. 
 Marie Antoinette, Archduchess of Austria and Dauphiness of 
 
 Prance. 
 Due de la Vauguyon, tutor of the royal princes. 
 Comte de Coigny, gentleman-in-waiting to the Dauphin. 
 The Countess op Langershausen, waiting on Marie Antoinette. 
 Comte de Stainville, brother-in-law of M. de Choiseul and 
 
 Governor of Strasbourg. 
 Cardinal Louis de Rohan. 
 
 daughters of Louis XV. 
 
132 
 
 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 
 Marechal de Richelieu, 
 
 Due d'Aiguillon, his nephew, M. de 
 
 Choiseul's successor, 
 M. de Ehonsac, Richelieu's son, 
 Prince de Soubise, 
 Marechal de Luxembourg, 
 Prince de Guemenee, 
 Prince de Conde, 
 
 COMTE DE LA VaUDRAYE, 
 
 M. d'Alambert, 
 
 M. de Malesherbes, 
 
 DUC DE LA YRILLIERE, 
 
 Due de Tesmes, a hunchback, 
 
 DUCHESSE DE ChOISEUL, 
 
 Duchesse de Grammont, M. de Choiseul's sister, 
 
 Princesse de Guemenee, 
 
 Comtesse d'Egmont, Richelieu's daughter, 
 
 Marquise de Mirepoix, 
 
 Ddchesse d'Ayen, 
 
 Baronne d'Alogny, 
 
 Duchesse de Noailles, 
 
 Marquise de Savigny, 
 
 Madame d'Epinay, 
 
 Madame de Polastron, 
 
 Comte de Sartines, Lieutenant of Police. 
 
 La Fouine, his clerk. 
 
 M. de Seguier, Advocate-General. 
 
 M. Bignon, Provost of the Merchants. 
 
 M. de la Chalotais, Attorney- General. 
 
 M. de Praslin, of the Choiseul ministry. 
 
 m. be bertin, , ot the Ai illoii minist 
 
 Abbe Terray, ) 
 
 M. de Maupeou, Vice-Chancellor. 
 
 M. de Boynes, of the Parliament. 
 
 Monsieur Remy, Yicar of St. Johns, Strasburg. 
 
 gentlemen of the 
 French Court. 
 
 ladies of the 
 French 
 Court. 
 
LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 
 133 
 
 chiefs of a secret brotherhood. 
 
 Baron Joseph Balsamo, otherwise known as Acharat and 
 
 Comte de Fenix, afterwards Cagliostro. 
 Lorenza Feliciani, his wife. 
 Althotas, a philosopher. 
 Emmanuel Swedenborg, 
 John Paul Jones, 
 Lord Fairfax, 
 Sciefport, a Russian, 
 Ximenes, a Spaniard, 
 John Casper Lavater, 
 Jean Paul Marat, 
 Baron de Taverney Maison Rouge. 
 Claire Andree de Taverney, his daughter. 
 Chevalier Philippe de Taverney Maison Rouge, Andree's 
 
 brother. 
 Nicole Legay, Andree's waiting-maid. 
 Gilbert, a poor youth, in love with Andree. 
 La Brie, servant of Baron de Taverney. 
 Jean Jacques Rousseau, 
 M. de Voltaire, 
 M. Caron de Beaumarchais, 
 M. de Holbach, 
 
 M. DE LA HARPE, 
 
 M. Diderot, 
 
 Marmontel, 
 
 M. de Jussieu, botanist. 
 
 M. Boucher, painter. 
 
 M. Pigale, sculptor. 
 
 Chevalier de Muy. 
 
 M. Mique, the King's architect. 
 
 Monsieur Louis, Marie Antoinette's physician. 
 
 Monsieur Bordeu, ) . . . , T . __ 
 
 , T tit * c physicians to Louis XV. 
 
 Monsieur la Martiniere, ) 
 
 Anastasie Euphemie Rodolphe, Comtesse de Beam. 
 
 k writers in the reign of Louis XV. 
 
134 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 
 Maitre Plageot, her lawyer. 
 
 Marguerite, his servant. 
 
 Chonchon, sister of Madame Dubarry. 
 
 Vicomte Jean Dubarry. 
 
 Zamore, Comtesse Dubarry's negro page. 
 
 Mademoiselle Sylvie, 1 Comtesse Dubm/ , maids . 
 
 Mademoiselle Doree, 
 
 Sebastian, a courier in the service of Madame de Grammont. 
 
 M. de Beausire, Nicole Legay's lover. 
 
 M. Lubin, court hairdresser. 
 
 Madame Lubin. 
 
 Lebel, valet to Louis XY. 
 
 Rafte, Richelieu's secretary. 
 
 M. Grange, an intendent. 
 
 Maitre Niquet, a notary. 
 
 Maitre Guildou, an attorney. 
 
 Therese, Rousseau's wife. 
 
 Fritz, Balsamo's servant. 
 
 Marguerite, servant of Andree de Taverney. 
 
 M. Leonard, a hairdresser. 
 
 Comtois, a coachman. 
 
 Courtin, a postilion. 
 
 Dame Grivette, Marat's servant. 
 
 Havard, a patient at the Hotel Dieu Hospital. 
 
 M. Guillotin, M.D. 
 
 Simon, a shoemaker's apprentice. 
 
 Pitou, a peasant of Villers-Cotteret. 
 
 Madeleine Pitou, his wife. 
 
 Ange Pitou, their son. 
 
 Angelique, Pitou's sister. 
 
 Captain of the "Adonis." 
 
THE QUEEN'S NECKLACE. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 A cruel fate seemed to have ordained that from 
 the moment that Louis XVI. and his lovely Aus- 
 trian queen ascended the throne of France, the 
 worst possible construction should be placed upon 
 their every act, however innocent or well-meant in 
 itself. The verdict of all investigators into the 
 proximate causes and the course of the French 
 Revolution — of all, that is, who can fairly make 
 any claim to impartiality, and their name is le- 
 gion — is so nearly unanimous that it has come 
 to be a mere truism, that the unhappy king and 
 queen were the victims of the time in which they 
 lived ; that they reaped the harvest sown by their 
 predecessors, and that the greatest crime that can 
 be attributed to them is lack of judgment, — a fail- 
 ure to appreciate and acquiesce in the inevitable 
 trend of events. 
 
 Says Carlyle, in his essay on the " Diamond Neck- 
 lace," apostrophizing Marie Antoinette : — 
 
136 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 "Thy fault in the French Revolution was that 
 thou wert the Symbol of the Sin and Misery of a 
 thousand years; that with St. Bartholomew and 
 Jacqueries, with Gabelles and Dragonnades and 
 Parcs-aux-Cerfs, the heart of mankind was filled 
 full, and foamed over into all-involving madness. . . . 
 As poor peasants, how happy, worthy had ye two 
 been ! But by evil destiny ye were made a King 
 and Queen of; and so both once more — are become 
 an astonishment and a byword to all times." 
 
 The wrong note was struck when Louis XVI. in 
 the first days of his reign, professing, and honestly 
 without doubt, a purpose to institute useful reforms, 
 and to avoid the scandals which had disgraced the 
 closing years of his grandfather's reign, went back 
 half a century for his Prime Minister, and unearthed 
 the Comte de Maurepas, who had been in retirement 
 since he was forced out of office by Madame de 
 Pompadour, thirty years before. We can read in 
 many places — for instance, in the " Mdmoires " of the 
 Comte de Se'gur, the friend of Lafayette — the unfor- 
 tunate impression that was produced by this reversion 
 to the reactionary ideas of the last generation. The 
 wrong note was struck, and yet it turned out to be 
 the key-note of all that was to follow. 
 
 Let us glance now for a moment at the first 
 occasion given by Marie Antoinette for unfriendly 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 137 
 
 criticism after she became queen. It has been 
 described by Madame Campan, the queen's first 
 lady-in-waiting. 
 
 It seems that the new king and queen received 
 visits of condolence on the death of Louis XV. at 
 La Muette, and were condoled with by a large assem- 
 blage, composed in great part of venerable dow- 
 agers with marvellous constructions in the way of 
 head-gear, which made some of them " appear some- 
 what ridiculous." But the queen's dignity was 
 equal to the occasion, and " she was not guilty of 
 the grave fault of laying aside the state she was 
 bound to preserve," although the kittenish behav- 
 ior of one of her dames du palais laid her open to 
 the charge of doing so. The Marquise de Clermont- 
 Tonnerre, tired of standing, as her functions re- 
 quired, sat down on the floor, " behind the fence 
 formed by the hoops of the queen and her ladies." 
 There she amused herself by " twitching the dresses 
 of the ladies, and a thousand other tricks." The 
 queen was moved to laughter, and several times 
 placed her fan before her face to hide her smiles, 
 to the intense wrath of the elderly females present, 
 who attributed her amusement to their appearance. 
 The inevitable chanson appeared next day. Madame 
 Campan remembered only the chorus, which ran 
 thus, — 
 
138 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 " Little Queen, you must not be 
 
 So saucy with your twenty years : 
 Your ill-used courtiers soon will see 
 You pass once more the barriers. 
 
 Fal lal la, fal lal la." 
 
 " More than fifteen years after this," says Madame 
 Campan, "I heard some old ladies, in the most re- 
 tired part of Auvergne, relating all the particulars 
 of the day of public condolence for the late king, 
 on which, as they said, the queen had laughed in 
 the faces of the sexagenarian duchesses and prin- 
 cesses who had thought it their duty to appear on 
 the occasion." 
 
 This incident is given at length because it is typi- 
 cal of the whole experience of the poor queen, 
 whose every act and every word was perverted, and 
 with the assistance, it must be said, of her own bad 
 judgment and the king's, on almost every occasion 
 was made to serve as a nail in the coffin of her 
 popularity. 
 
 Madame Campan's pages are full of similar epi- 
 sodes, trivial in appearance, but really, as seen in 
 the light of subsequent events, possessing a sinister 
 significance. If the effects of Madame de Clermont- 
 Tonnerre's playfulness lasted fifteen years, we may 
 easily understand that the wretched affair which 
 forms the groundwork of the romance contained in 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 139 
 
 these volumes had much wider and more far-reach- 
 ing consequences than, taken by itself, it would 
 seem to merit. 
 
 It should be said that the crisis of this affair of 
 the necklace (" Affaire du Collier ") came directly 
 upon the heels of the first performances of the much 
 discussed " Mariage de Figaro " of Beaumarchais. It 
 had been kept off the stage for some time by the 
 king's order, on account of divers Voltairean and 
 levelling doctrines enunciated in it, and was finally 
 produced, substantially unchanged, by virtue of 
 a permit granted with the understanding that 
 the objectionable passages had been stricken out 
 It was received with such thunders of applause 
 that the king did not venture to stop it; but the 
 author was imprisoned, and public opinion was very 
 outspoken. 
 
 With regard to the actual facts concerning the 
 famous necklace, it may be said, first, that they are 
 largely shrouded in impenetrable mystery, and, sec- 
 ondly, that, so far as they can be deciphered with 
 any certainty, they substantially agree with the 
 version given by Dumas. 
 
 The materials for unravelling the very tangled 
 thread are voluminous, consisting largely of the 
 absolutely inconsistent statements made by the vari- 
 ous defendants, and which form part of the records of 
 
HO INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 the trial. There is also a life of Madame de La 
 Motte written by herself ; a letter from London from 
 the pen of Cagliostro ; the memoirs of Abbe* Georgel, 
 private secretary of Cardinal de Eohan, and Madame 
 Campan. But the most important evidence — indeed, 
 the only really important evidence — was burned up 
 by Abbe* Georgel, in obedience to the note written 
 by Eohan at the time of his arrest, which reached 
 him before seals were put upon the Cardinal's papers. 
 Other presumably damnatory documents were de- 
 stroyed by Madame de La Motte before her arrest. 
 All the existing evidence Carlyle claims, and un- 
 doubtedly with perfect truth, to have sifted and 
 weighed carefully ; and his conclusions demonstrate 
 the impossibility of ever coming at the whole truth 
 as to the proper apportionment of responsibility 
 between La Motte and Eohan. 
 
 The only approach to accurate information as 
 to the date when the necklace was put together 
 is the statement of Madame Campan that it was 
 originally intended for Madame du Barry, who 
 "went into half pay" 1 in 1774, when Louis XV. 
 died. 
 
 To the dismay of Boehmer, Marie Antoinette 
 refused to consider the purchase of the necklace. 
 "We have more need of seventy-fours than of 
 
 i Carlyle. 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 141 
 
 Necklaces," she said. For three years after that, it 
 was hawked around among the crowned heads of 
 Europe, but to no purpose. " The age of Chivalry- 
 is gone, and that of Bankruptcy is come." Among 
 others, "the Portuguese Ambassador praises, but 
 will not purchase." 
 
 At last, one day, poor Boehmer, who, as Court 
 Jeweller, had some peculiar privileges, bursts into 
 the queen's apartment, flings himself at her Majes- 
 ty's feet, and entreats her either to buy his neck- 
 lace, or give him permission to drown himself in the 
 Seine. She coolly suggests that he might, as a 
 possible third course, take the necklace to pieces, 
 and dismisses him. 
 
 The foundation of the queen's dislike, almost 
 hatred, of Cardinal de Eohan, seems to have had 
 its origin in a despatch sent by him while he 
 was Ambassador at Vienna, to this effect : " Maria 
 Theresa stands, indeed, with the handkerchief in 
 one hand, weeping for the woes of Poland; but 
 with the sword in the other hand, ready to cut 
 Poland in sections and take her share." D'Aiguil- 
 lon, who was then minister, communicates the 
 letter to Louis XV., and he to Du Barry, " to 
 season her souper." It became a court-joke, and 
 got to the ears of the Dauphiness, who never 
 forgot it. 
 
142 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 If, as seems very doubtful, the Cardinal did speak 
 disparagingly of the princess to her mother, he 
 must have repented it in sackcloth and ashes, for 
 there seems to be no question as to the reality of 
 his passion for her, dating from his return to France 
 soon after the death of Louis XV. " Through ten 
 long years," says Carlyle, " of new resolve and new 
 despondency, of flying from Saverne to Paris and 
 from Paris to Saverne, has it lasted ; hope deferred 
 making the heart sick." Meanwhile he had se- 
 cured the Archbishopric (of Strasburg), the Grand 
 Almonership, the Cardinalship, " and lastly, to ap- 
 pease the Jews, that fattest Commendatorship, 
 founded by King Thierri, the Do-nothing. . . . 
 ' All good ! ' languidly croaks Eohan ; ' yet all not 
 the one thing needful : alas, the queen's eyes do 
 not yet shine on me.' 
 
 "Abbe' Georgel admits, in his own polite diplo- 
 matic way, that the Mud-volcano [Rohan] was 
 much agitated by these trials; and in time quite 
 changed. Monseigneur deviated into cabalistic 
 courses, after elixirs, philters, and the philoso- 
 pher's stone ; that is, the volcanic steam grew 
 thicker and heavier ; at last, by Cagliostro's magic 
 (for Cagliostro and the Cardinal by elective affin- 
 ity must meet), it sank into the opacity of perfect 
 London fog." 
 
INTEODUCTOKY NOTE. 143 
 
 It is said that Guiseppe or "Beppo" Balsamo, 
 otherwise Count Alessandro di Cagliostro, in his 
 younger days took some pains to procure from a 
 country vicar, under the falsest of pretences, " a bit 
 of cotton steeped in holy oils." This seemingly in- 
 significant circumstance is given much importance 
 by Carlyle, in his extremely searching and thorough 
 analysis of this remarkable character, as tending to 
 prove that there was at the bottom of his nature 
 " a certain musk-grain of real superstitious belief." 
 It must be said, however, that history affords but 
 slight justification for endowing him with any of 
 the nobler qualities which are attributed to him 
 in these pages. From the very beginning of his 
 career as a gamin in the streets of Palermo, where 
 he was born in 1743, down to his death in prison at 
 Eome fifty-odd years later, he seldom failed to ex- 
 hibit all the distinctive traits of an impostor and 
 a charlatan. His claim, so often touched upon by 
 Dumas, that he had lived for several thousand 
 years, is well illustrated by the historical fact that 
 he was wont, when passing a statue of Christ, " to 
 pause with a wondrously accented plaintive ' Ha ! ' as 
 of recognition, as of thousand years' remembrance." 
 
 It will be remembered that, in the introduction 
 to the " Memoirs of a Physician," Dumas mentions 
 the Swiss Lavater as one of the prominent actors 
 
144 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 in the mystic assemblage on Mont Tonnerre. The 
 association between the two really existed ; and the 
 impression made by the pupil of Althotas upon the 
 worthy and learned savant is a convincing proof of 
 his marvellous power of imposition. Lavater said 
 of him: — 
 
 " Cagliostro — a man such as few are ; in whom, how- 
 ever, I am not a believer. Oh that he were simple of 
 heart and humble, like a child; that he had feeling for 
 the simplicity of the gospel and the majesty of the 
 Lord! Who were so great as he? Cagliostro often 
 tells what is not true, and promises what he does not 
 perform. Yet do I nowise hold his operations as decep' 
 tion, though they are not what he calls them." 
 
 The problems presented by the unexampled career 
 of this man were grappled with by Schiller, giving 
 rise to his unfinished novel of the " Geisterseher ; " 
 and by Goethe, who relieved his mind from the 
 hold the matter took upon it by writing the drama 
 called the " Gross-Kophta." After wandering many 
 years through many lands, Cagliostro found at Stras- 
 burg " the richest, inflammablest, most open-handed 
 dupe ever yet vouchsafed him," in the person of the 
 Prince-Cardinal Louis de Eohan, of whom the Abbe* 
 Georgel wrote that " he came at last to have no 
 other will than Cagliostro's." 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 145 
 
 His connection with the affair of the necklace is 
 rather problematical, except in so far as he was the 
 confidant and mystical adviser of the Cardinal, whose 
 hopes, founded upon his supposed correspondence 
 with the queen, he undoubtedly nursed with his 
 predictions of great power and influence to come 
 by means of it. 
 
 The early history of Jeanne de Saint-Eemy, by 
 courtesy Countess, styled also of Yalois, is told by 
 Dumas with substantial accuracy, and need not be 
 repeated here. 
 
 She married Monsieur de La Motte, a private in 
 the Gendarmes, at Bar-sur-Aube, and dubbed him 
 Count, by virtue of her own Countess-ship. 
 
 In 1783 she first met Eohan at Saverne, whither 
 she went with Madame de Boulainvilliers ; and there 
 and then, so far as the workings of her ingenious 
 mind can be followed, she seems to have formed the 
 outline of the scheme which developed into the 
 barefaced deception of Eohan, and the theft of 
 the necklace. 
 
 For eighteen months after the scheme had taken 
 shape in her brain, she carried on the fictitious cor- 
 respondence with the Cardinal, assisted by Eetau de 
 Villette, an associate of her husband, " in the sub- 
 terranean shades of rascaldom," and finally ventured 
 upon the audacious deception, in which Dumas makes 
 
145 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 Nicole Oliva Legay figure as her accomplice. That 
 part, however, was really played by a Parisian cour- 
 tesan named Essigny, known to history under the 
 name of Gay d'Oliva, or Olisva, which was given 
 her by La Motte, the latter form being an anagram 
 of Valois. 
 
 If Madame Campan is to be credited, Marie An- 
 toinette had never seen Madame de La Motte, but 
 the Countess had once met one Desclos, a valet of 
 the queen's bed-chamber, at the house of a surgeon 
 at Versailles. This Desclos figured prominently in 
 the deception put upon the Cardinal; for Eetau 
 de Villette personated him, or is supposed to have 
 done so, on several momentous occasions when the 
 Countess found it necessary to produce a duly ac- 
 credited agent of the queen. 
 
 Thus, then, a bargain is arranged between Boehmer, 
 still with a necklace for sale, and " Madame Lamotte 
 de Saint-Eemy de Saint-Shifty," as representing 
 Monsieur de Eohan. On the 1st of February, 1785, 
 the famous jewel was delivered to the Cardinal, who 
 signed a receipt for it : by him it was handed over 
 to the Countess at Versailles for transmission to 
 the queen. A knock is heard at the door, and 
 Monseigneur retires to an alcove whence he can 
 see what takes place. Enters valet Desclos, alias 
 Eetau de Villette, who receives the precious casket, 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. H7 
 
 with solemn injunctions and promises, and retires. 
 " Thus softly, silently, like a very dream, flits away 
 our solid necklace, — through the Horn Gate of 
 Dreams." 
 
 It was taken to pieces and sold under the aus- 
 pices of " Count " de La Motte, in London and else- 
 where, long before the explosion. 
 
 Let us now listen for a moment to Madame Cam- 
 pan, as she relates the circumstances under which 
 the explosion took place. Her narrative naively 
 displays the almost incredible lack of judgment on 
 the part of the queen, who, while she was undoubt- 
 edly free from any guilt in the transaction, seemed 
 fated to act as if she were guilty. It will be noticed 
 that the alleged signature of the queen, " Marie An- 
 toinette de France" was in the possession of the Car- 
 dinal, and that it was made a subject of accusation 
 against him that he should not have recognized the 
 impossibility of the queen's having so designated 
 herself : — 
 
 "When Madame Sophie was born, the queen told 
 me that Monsieur de Sainte-James, a rich financier, 
 had apprised her that Boehmer was still intent upon 
 the sale of his necklace, and that she ought, for her 
 own satisfaction, to endeavor to learn what the man 
 had done with it : she desired me, the first time I should 
 meet him, to speak with him about it, as if from the 
 
148 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 interest I took in his welfare. I did so, and lie told 
 me he had been fortunate enough to sell it at Constanti- 
 nople for the favorite Sultana. I told the queen, 
 who was delighted to hear it, but could not under- 
 stand how the Sultan came to purchase his diamonds 
 in Paris. 
 
 " She long avoided seeing Boehmer, being fearful of 
 his rash character. 
 
 " On the baptism of the Due d'Angouleme in 1785, 
 the king gave him a diamond epaulette and buckles, 
 and directed Boehmer to deliver them to the queen. 
 He presented them on her return from mass, and at 
 the same time handed her a letter in the form of a peti- 
 tion. In this he told her that he was happy to see her 
 ' in possession of the finest diamonds in Europe/ and 
 begged her not to forget him. The queen read the 
 letter aloud, and saw nothing in it but a proof of 
 mental aberration; she lighted the paper at a wax 
 taper standing near her, as she had some letters to 
 seal, saying, c It is not worth keeping. ' She after- 
 wards much regretted the loss of this enigmatical 
 memorial, 
 
 "On the 3d of August Boehmer came to me at my 
 country house at Crespy [the first payment was to be 
 made July 30th, but, of course, was not]. He was ex- 
 tremely uneasy at not having received any answer from 
 the queen, and asked me if I had no commission for 
 him. I told him no. . . . i But/ said Boehmer, i the 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 149 
 
 answer to the letter I handed her — to whom must 
 I apply for that?' 'To nobody,' I answered; 'the 
 queen burned it without understanding it.' 'Ah! 
 Madame, ' he exclaimed, ' that is impossible ; the queen 
 knows that she has money to pay me ! ' " 
 
 He then proceeded to inform her that the queen 
 wanted the necklace, and had had it purchased for 
 her by Cardinal de Eohan. 
 
 "'You are deceived/ I exclaimed; 'the queen has 
 not once spoken to the Cardinal since his return from 
 Vienna: there is not a man at Court less favorably 
 looked upon. ' ' You are deceived yourself, Madame, ' 
 said Boehmer; 'she sees him so much in private that 
 it was to him she gave thirty thousand francs, which 
 were paid me as an instalment : she took them in his 
 presence out of the little secretaire of Sevres porcelain, 
 next the fireplace in her room.' 'And the Cardinal 
 told you all this ? ' ' Yes, Madame, himself.' ' What 
 a detestable plot ! ' I cried. ' Indeed, Madame, I be- 
 gin to be much alarmed, for his Eminence assured me 
 that the queen would wear the necklace on Whit-Sun- 
 day ; but I did not see it upon her, and that was why I 
 wrote to her Majesty.' 
 
 "Boehmer never said one word to me about the 
 woman Lamotte, and her name was mentioned for the 
 first time by the Cardinal in his answers to the inter- 
 rogatories put to him before the king." 
 
150 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 Boehmer subsequently had an interview with the 
 queen, after he had reported to the Cardinal the re- 
 sult of his conversation with Madame Campan. He 
 related to her all that he had been made to believe 
 had taken place between her and himself through 
 the medium of the Cardinal. He refused to listen 
 to her denials, and kept repeating : " Madame, the 
 time for pretending has gone by : condescend to 
 confess that you have my necklace, and let some 
 assistance be given me, or my bankruptcy will soon 
 bring everything to light." 
 
 It was after this interview that the queen told 
 the Baron de Breteuil the whole story. He was, as 
 is well known, an inveterate enemy of Bohan, and 
 was only too glad of the opportunity to disgrace 
 him. 
 
 "On the following Sunday, the 15th August, being 
 the Assumption, at twelve o'clock, at the very moment 
 when the Cardinal, dressed in his pontifical garments, 
 was about to proceed to the chapel, he was sent for to 
 the king's closet where the queen was." 
 
 He was then questioned by the king, admitted 
 that he had been duped, and produced the alleged 
 letter from the queen, signed " Marie Antoinette de 
 France," and offered to pay for the necklace him- 
 self. He became much confused, and made con- 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 151 
 
 tradictory statements, and was at last given into 
 custody, but was able, as stated above, to provide 
 for the destruction of his papers, whereby an im- 
 penetrable cloud was thrown over the whole affair. 
 He was followed to the Bastille by Madame de La 
 Motte and her husband, Cagliostro, Eetau de Vil- 
 lette, and Mademoiselle Gay d'Oliva. The trial 
 dragged through many weary months, during which 
 unheard-of efforts were made by the family of the 
 Cardinal as well as the clergy, even to the Pope 
 himself, to procure for him the right to be tried at 
 Eome. " The conduct of the king and queen," says 
 Madame Campan, " was equally and loudly censured 
 in the apartments of Versailles, and in the hotels 
 and coffee-houses of Paris." This was because they 
 did not hush the matter up. What would have 
 been said, had they tried to do so ? 
 
 On the 31st of May, 1786, " at nine in the evening, 
 after a sitting of eighteen hours," the Parliament of 
 Paris solemnly pronounced judgment : — 
 
 Cardinal de Rohan goes scot-free: " Countess de La- 
 motte is shaven on the head, branded with red-hot iron 
 V ( Voleuse) on both shoulders, and confined for life to 
 the Salpetriere; her Count wandering uncertain, with 
 diamonds for sale, over the British Empire ; the Sieur 
 de Villette, for handling a queen's pen, is banished 
 forever; the too queenlike Demoiselle Gay d'Oliva 
 
152 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 (with her unfathered infant) 'put out of Court:' and 
 Grand Cophta Cagliostro, liberated indeed, but pillaged, 
 and ordered forthwith to take himself away." 
 
 The king, persisting in his view that the Cardinal 
 and the woman La Motte were equally culpable, 
 sought to restore the balance of justice by exiling the 
 Cardinal to La-Chaise-Dieu, and suffering Madame de 
 La Motte to escape a few days after her incarcera- 
 tion, thus confirming Paris in the opinion that the 
 latter had really interested the queen herself. 
 
 " Thus," says Carlyle, " does the miserable pickle- 
 herring tragedy of the Diamond Necklace wind it- 
 self up." 
 
 Of the romantic as distinguished from the histori- 
 cal portions of the " Queen's Necklace " little need 
 be said, save that one has not far to seek in French 
 history of the last century to find precedents in 
 profusion for the unpaternal conduct of the elder 
 Taverney. Andr^e and Philippe are still struggling 
 against the cruel fate which seems to have doomed 
 them to know no part of life but its sorrows ; while 
 we are introduced for the first time to Olivier de 
 Charny, of whom we are to see much more in the 
 later volumes of this cycle. 
 
 To the historical characters of the story we must 
 add Beausire, who is thus mentioned in a manu- 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 153 
 
 script note to the collection of documents published 
 under the title of " Affaire, du Collier " : — 
 
 "Gay d'Oliva got married some years afterward to 
 one Beausire, an ex-noble, formerly attached to the 
 D'Artois household. In 1790 he was Captain of the 
 National Guard Company of the Temple. He then 
 retired to Choisy, and managed to be named Procureur 
 of that Commune 5 he finally employed himself in draw- 
 ing up lists of proscription in the Luxembourg Prison, 
 where he played the part of informer." 
 
 Him also, and Nicole or Oliva, we shall meet 
 again. 
 
 Once more, as the story closes, we are reminded by 
 the apparition of the ghoul-like Marat, accompanied 
 by the more human Eobespierre, of the gradual ap- 
 proach of the cataclysm. 
 
 In the volumes which succeed we shall find them 
 no longer hovering on the outskirts of the crowd, 
 but taking a too prominent part in the world, — 
 shaping events which are there chronicled. 
 
THE QUEEN'S NECKLACE. 
 
 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 
 Period, 1784-1785. 
 
 Louis XVI., King of Trance. 
 
 Marie Antoinette, his Queen. 
 
 Comte de Provence, j brothers rf ^ Ki 
 
 COMTE d'ArTOIS, ) 
 
 COMTESSE D'ARTOIS. 
 
 Due d'Angouleme, son of Corate d'Artois. 
 
 Due d'Orleans. 
 
 Prince sse de Lamballe. 
 
 The Princess Royal. 
 
 Gustavus, King of Sweden, visiting Richelieu under the assumed 
 
 name of Comte de Haga. 
 Prince Louis, Cardinal de Rohan, Grand Almoner of Prance. 
 M. de Calonne, Minister of Finance. 
 Baron de Breteuil, Keeper of the Seals. 
 Marechal de Castries, Minister of the Navy. 
 M. de Lapeyrouse, a navigator. 
 Marechal de Richelieu. 
 Comtesse Dubarry. 
 
 Comte de Launay, Governor of the Bastille. 
 M. de Crosne, Lieutenant of Police. 
 
 Marquis de Pavras, Captain of the Guards of Comte de Provence. 
 Marquis de Lafayette. 
 Comte Cagliostro. 
 
 Jeanne de Saint-Remy Yalois, Comtesse de La Motte. 
 Comte de La Motte. 
 
Y 
 
 156 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 
 M. Doillot, Madame de La Motte's counsel. 
 
 Admiral de Suffren. 
 
 Comte Olivier de Charny, his nephew, 
 
 Chevalier Philippe de Taverney Maison I m love with the 
 
 Rouge, ' Queen - 
 
 Andree de Taverney, maid-of-honor to Marie Antoinette. 
 Baron de Taverney Maison Rouge. 
 Mademoiselle Oliva, formerly called Nicole Legay. 
 M. de Beausire, her lover. 
 Toussaint, son of Beausire and Oliva. 
 Manoel, a Portuguese adventurer. 
 
 _,' ' l jewellers, in possession of the diamond necklace. 
 
 M. Bossange, ) 
 
 Retau de Yilette, a journalist. 
 
 Abbe Lekel, Almoner of the Bastille. 
 
 M. de Suza, the Portuguese Ambassador. 
 
 M. Ducorneau, Chancellor of the Portuguese Embassy. 
 
 M. Caron de Beaumarchais, dramatic writer. 
 
 M. Necker. 
 
 Doctor Mesmer. 
 
 Doctor Deslon, a disciple of Mesmer. 
 
 M. de Bergasse, one of Mesmer's patients. 
 
 Saint-Martin, teacher of spiritualism. 
 
 Maximilien de Robespierre. 
 
 Jean Paul Marat. 
 
 M. Breton, Clerk of the Court judging Madame de La Motte. 
 
 Marquis de Condorcet^ 
 
 Comte de Coigny, 
 
 M. de Lauzun, 
 
 M. de Yaudreuil, 
 
 M. de Conde, 
 
 M. de Tremouille, 
 
 M. de Penthievre, 
 
 Baron de Planta, 
 
 Madame de Polignac, 
 
 • of the French Court. 
 
LIST OF CHARACTERS. 157 
 
 Madame Duval, lady-in-waiting to Marie Antoinette. 
 
 Madame de Misery, first lady of the bed-chamber. 
 
 Madame Patrix, lady's maid to the Queen. 
 
 Dr. Louis, the Queen's physician. 
 
 Weber, Marie Antoinette's coachman. 
 
 M. Leonard, her hairdresser. 
 
 Laurent, a porter at the palace. 
 
 M. Lenoir, an architect. 
 
 The Major-Domo oe Marechal de Richelieu. 
 
 Clotilde, Madame de La Motte's servant. 
 
 Aldegonde, Retau de Vilette's servant. 
 
 M. Eingret, a Paris upholsterer. 
 
 Landry, Remy, and Sylvain, his apprentices. 
 
 Hubert, a keeper at the Bastille. 
 
 Madame Hubert, his wife. 
 
 Saint-Georges, a skater. 
 
 Guyon, a turnkey at the Bastille. 
 
ANGE PITOU. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 On Christmas Day, 1753, Lord Chesterfield wrote 
 from Paris, summing up his observations on the 
 state of France : " In short, all the symptoms which 
 I have ever met with in history, previous to great 
 changes and revolutions in government, now exist 
 and daily increase in France." 
 
 This, being written so early and by a foreigner, 
 is perhaps the most noteworthy of the prophecies 
 of disaster to come which were trumpeted forth 
 by so many keen-sighted intellects during the last 
 half of the eighteenth century. It was floating 
 in the air; it was written upon the faces of the 
 starving, down-trodden people, who found them- 
 selves burdened with this tax and that tax, with 
 tithes and tallies, from which the nobility and 
 clergy were exempt ; while on the other hand, the 
 luxury and extravagance of those privileged classes 
 grew every day more wanton, and their vices more 
 shameless. Upon such a foundation the philoso- 
 
160 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 pliers and encyclopedists had built solidly and well, 
 so that Voltaire wrote exultingly of the "glorious 
 sights " which the young men of his day would 
 live to see; wherefore they were greatly to be 
 envied ! 
 
 The old Marquis de Mirabeau, father of him 
 who became so prominent a figure during the early 
 months of the Kevolution, — a curious, crabbed old 
 fellow, who called himself the " friend of men," and 
 whose peculiarities are described by Dumas in the 
 " Comtesse de Charny," — wrote in his memoirs a 
 description of a peasant's holiday which he wit- 
 nessed in the provinces about the time of the death 
 of Louis XV. (1774). After describing the dance 
 which ended in a battle, and "the frightful men, 
 or rather frightful wild animals, ... of gigantic 
 stature, heightened by high wooden clogs, . . . their 
 faces haggard and covered with long greasy hair, — 
 the upper part of the visage waxing pale, the lower, 
 distorting itself into the attempt at a cruel laugh 
 and a sort of ferocious impatience," — he moralizes 
 thus : " And these people pay the taille ! And 
 you want, further, to take their salt from them ! 
 And you know not what it is you are stripping 
 barer, or as you call it, governing, — what, by a 
 spurt of your pen, in its cold, dastard indifference, 
 you will fancy you can starve always with impunity, 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 161 
 
 always till the catastrophe come ! Ah, Madame, 
 such government by blindman's-buff, stumbling 
 along too far, will end in a general overturn." 
 
 It is curious to notice with what unanimity the 
 good intentions of Louis XVI. are admitted, almost 
 taken for granted, by all writers upon this period, 
 except the virulent pamphleteers of the day. Even 
 Michelet admits it, though somewhat grudgingly, — 
 Michelet, who went out of his way to charge Louis 
 XV., whose load of sin was heavy enough in all 
 conscience, with a foul crime for which there seems 
 to be no shadow of authority. 
 
 But it is hard to convince one's self that the 
 general overturn could have been avoided, even had 
 the will and character of the young king been as 
 worthy of praise as his impulses and intentions 
 undoubtedly were. Hastened it was, beyond ques- 
 tion, by his weakness at critical moments, by his 
 subserviency to the will of the queen, which was 
 exerted uninterruptedly, and with what now seems 
 like fatal perversity, in the wrong direction, during 
 the years when there was still a chance, at least, of 
 saving the monarchy. It was through the influence 
 of the queen and her intimate circle that step after 
 step, which, if taken in time, would have made a 
 favorable impression upon an impressionable people, 
 "whose nature it was to love their kings," was 
 
162 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 delayed until it was, so to say, extorted, and hence 
 bereft of all appearance of a willing, voluntary 
 concession. Numerous instances of this fatality, if 
 we may so call it, are told by Dumas ; notably the 
 day's postponement of the king's journey to Paris 
 after the day of the Bastille. 
 
 With the virtuous, philosophic Turgot, "who 
 had a whole reformed France in his head," for 
 Controller-General of the Finances, the reign of 
 Louis XYI. seemed to start off under the best of 
 auspices. But, as Carlyle tersely puts it, "Turgot 
 has faculties, honesty, insight, heroic volition, 
 but the Fortunatus's purse he has not. Sanguine 
 controller-general ! a whole pacific French Eevolu- 
 tion may stand schemed in the head of the thinker, 
 but who shall pay the unspeakable 'indemnities' 
 that will be needed ? Alas ! far from that ; on the 
 very threshold of the business he proposes that the 
 clergy, the noblesse, the very parliaments, be sub- 
 jected to taxes like the people ! One shriek of 
 indignation and astonishment reverberates through 
 all the chateau galleries ; . . . the poor king, who 
 had written to him a few weeks ago, 'You and I 
 are the only ones who have the people's interest at 
 heart,' must write now a dismissal, and let the 
 French Bevolution accomplish itself, pacifically or 
 not, as it can." 
 
INTEODUCTOKY NOTE. 163 
 
 To Turgot succeeded Necker, also a skilful and 
 honest financier, also with schemes of peaceful 
 reform in his head. For five years he carried the 
 burden ; and at last he, too, was driven to propose 
 the taxation of clergy and nobility, and thereupon 
 to take his departure, May, 1781. 
 
 Under the short administrations of Joly de 
 Fleury and D'Ormesson, matters failed to improve 
 (as indeed, how could they do otherwise?), until 
 on the retirement of the latter, when the king 
 purchased Eambouillet, without consulting him, in 
 the autumn of 1783, " matters threaten to come to 
 a still-stand," says Carlyle. 
 
 At such a crisis destiny decreed that M. de 
 Calonne should be put forward to fill the vacancy, 
 — a man of indisputable genius, " before all things, 
 for borrowing." 
 
 " Hope radiates from his face, persuasion hangs 
 on his tongue. For all straits he has present 
 remedy, and will make the world roll on wheels 
 before him." 
 
 In the "Diamond Necklace," Dumas has given 
 us a faithful picture of Calonne and his method of 
 exploiting his financial genius. His grandiloquent, 
 " Madame, if it is but difficult, it is done ; if it is 
 impossible, it shall be done," seems hardly to stamp 
 him as the man for the place at that critical period, 
 
164 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 however great may have been the felicity of the 
 (Eil-de-Bceuf under the temporary plenty which re- 
 sulted from the policy of " borrowing at any price." 
 
 It would be hard to exaggerate the effect upon 
 the growing aspirations of the French people after 
 the unfamiliar something which they came to call 
 " liberty," of the result of the struggle in America, 
 in which the cause of the colonists was so power- 
 fully supported by the little band of Frenchmen of 
 whom Lafayette was the most prominent and the 
 most notable. He returned to France in 1783, to 
 be dubbed in some quarters " Scipio Americanus." 
 
 The scandalous affair of the necklace was, as we 
 have heretofore seen, seized upon by the enemies of 
 the queen as a weapon with which to assail her 
 reputation, although her absolute innocence of any 
 guilty connection with it is now beyond doubt. 
 The results of this unfortunate episode — the " im- 
 mense rumor and conjecture from all mankind," 
 coupled with the slanderous charges made by 
 Madame Lamotte in a letter from London after 
 her escape from the Salp^triere — went far towards 
 creating the unreasoning hatred of the "Austrian 
 woman," which she herself did so little to assuage 
 when the clouds became blacker than night, and 
 began to emit the thunder and lightning of the 
 Eevolution. 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 165 
 
 In the spring of 1787, Calonne, his borrowing 
 powers being at an end, conceived the idea of con- 
 voking the " Notables " — an expedient unheard of 
 for one hundred and sixty years — to sanction his 
 new plan of taxation. They met on the 22d of 
 February, 1787, one hundred and thirty-seven of 
 them, "men of the sword, men of the robe, peers, 
 dignified clergy, parliamentary presidents," with 
 seven princes of the blood to preside over the seven 
 bureaux, — "a round gross in all." They would 
 have none of Calonne or his plans; and he was 
 dismissed in April, after which the " Notables " sat 
 until May 25, "treating of all manner of public 
 things," and then first were the States-General 
 mentioned. 
 
 Calonne was succeeded by Cardinal Lome'nie de 
 Brienne, — a dissolute, worthless sexagenarian, who 
 devised various tax-edicts, stamp-taxes, and the like, 
 all of which the Parliament of Paris refused to 
 register. The expedient of a Bed of Justice was 
 resorted to, and resulted in the most ominous of 
 all portents: for the first time in history the Par- 
 liament refused to obey the royal " Je veux " (I wish 
 it.) They were exiled for a month, — August to 
 September, 1787, — and returned upon conditions. 
 
 In the spring of 1788, Lomdnie's great scheme 
 of dismissing the parliaments altogether, and sub- 
 
166 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 stituting a more subservient " Plenary Court " was 
 detected before it was ripe, and denounced to the 
 Parliament of Paris, which body, upon remonstrat- 
 ing, was again exiled (May), An attempt thereafter 
 to raise supplies by royal edict simply, led to the 
 rebellion of all the provincial parliaments, the public 
 expressing its approval more noisily than ever. On 
 August 8 appeared a royal edict to the effect that 
 the States-General should be convoked for May 
 following; it was followed by another edict, that 
 treasury payments should thenceforth be made 
 three-fifths in cash and two-fifths in paper, — a 
 virtual confession that the treasury was insolvent. 
 Thereupon Lome'nie was incontinently dismissed, 
 and Necker recalled from Switzerland to become 
 the "Savior of France." 
 
 A second convocation of the "Notables" (No- 
 vember 6 to December 12, 1788) undertook to decide 
 how the States should be held : whether the three 
 estates should meet as one deliberative body, or as 
 three, or two; and, most important of all, what 
 should be the relative force, in voting, of the Third 
 Estate, or Commonalty. They separated without 
 settling any of the points in question. 
 
 In January, 1789, the elections began, — the real 
 beginning of the French Eevolution in the opinion 
 of Carlyle, and indeed, of most writers. 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 167 
 
 On the 13th of July, 1788, there had been a 
 most destructive hail-storm throughout France, and 
 the growing crops were literally destroyed ; where- 
 by the extreme destitution which had come to be 
 the natural condition of the lower classes had been 
 accentuated. In addition, the winter of 1788-89 
 was one of extreme rigor, so that it seemed almost 
 as if God himself were openly manifesting his will 
 that the general overturn should come. 
 
 The riot in which Keveillon, the paper manufac- 
 turer, was concerned occurred in April, 1789, just 
 prior to the assembling of the States-General on 
 May 4. 
 
 The clergy and nobility at once exhibited their 
 purpose to act as separate bodies; and the Third 
 Estate, led by Mirabeau and others, decided that it 
 must be the mainspring of the whole, and that it 
 would remain "inert" until the other two estates 
 should join with it; under which circumstances it 
 could outvote them and do what it chose. For 
 seven weeks this state of " inertia " endured, until 
 the court decided to intervene and the assembly 
 hall was found closed against the representatives of 
 the people on June 20. Thereupon they met in 
 the old tennis-court (Jeu de Paume), and there the 
 celebrated " Oath of the Tennis-Court" was taken by 
 every man of them but one, — an oath " that they 
 
168 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 will not separate for man below, but will meet in all 
 places, under all circumstances, wheresoever two or 
 three can get together, till they have made the 
 Constitution." 
 
 One subsequent attempt was made by the king 
 to intimidate this ominously persistent body; but 
 the messenger whom he despatched to command 
 them to separate (" Mercury " de Bre'ze', Carlyle calls 
 him) was addressed in very plain language by the 
 lion-headed Mirabeau, and retired in confusion. The 
 court recoiled before the spectacle of " all France on 
 the edge of blazing out ; " the other two estates joined 
 the Third, which triumphed in every particular. 
 Henceforth the States-General are the " National As- 
 sembly," sometimes called the " Constituent Assem- 
 bly," or assembly met to make the constitution. 
 
 This cursory sketch of the leading events of the 
 early years of the reign of Louis XVI. is offered as 
 a sort of supplement to that presented by Dumas 
 before he takes his readers into the "thick of the 
 business" in Paris. 
 
 The badly veiled military preparations to which 
 the terror of the queen and the court led the king 
 to consent, kept the Parisian populace in a constant 
 state of fermentation, which was powerfully helped 
 on by the continued scarcity of food and the con- 
 sequent influx of starving provincials into the 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 169 
 
 metropolis. The Gardes Franchises gave indubi- 
 table symptoms of popular leanings, which perhaps 
 emboldened the effervescent spirits of the mob more 
 than a little. 
 
 The news of the dismissal of Necker, circulated 
 on Sunday, July 12, kindled the first panic terror 
 of Paris into a wild frenzy, and resulted in the 
 siege of the Bastille, " perhaps the most momentous 
 known to history." 
 
 The course of events immediately preceding the 
 descent upon that " stronghold of tyranny, called 
 Bastille, or 'building,' as if there were no other 
 building," as well as those of the siege itself, is 
 traced with marvellous fidelity by Dumas, due 
 allowance being made, of course, for the necessities 
 of the romance. He closely follows Michelet ; but 
 the details are told, with substantial unanimity, by 
 all historians of the fateful event. 
 
 The part assigned to Billot in the narrative 
 before us was in reality played by several persons. 
 It was Thuriot, an elector from the Hotel de Yille, 
 who gained admission to the fortress and investi- 
 gated its condition ; who ascended with De Launay 
 to the battlements and showed himself to the mob 
 to quiet their fears that he had been foully dealt 
 with. This same Thuriot, as president of the con- 
 vention, refused to allow Eobespierre to speak in 
 
170 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 his own defence on the 10th Thermidcr, year II. 
 (July 28, 1794). It was Louis Tournay, a black- 
 smith and old soldier of the Eegiment Dauphin e\ 
 who hacked away the chain which upheld the first 
 drawbridge. It was an unknown man who first 
 essayed to cross the ditch to take the note dictating 
 terms and fell to the bottom (and was killed) ; but 
 it was Stanislas Maillard who followed and made 
 the passage in safety. 
 
 Elie and Hullin, it is needless to say, are his- 
 torical characters, and worthy of an honorable place 
 in history for their heroic attempts, then and after- 
 wards, to prevent the needless shedding of blood. 
 
 The extraordinary thing about the attack on the 
 Bastille is the startling unanimity of the people 
 that it was the first and fittest object of attack. It 
 seems the more extraordinary because, as Michelet 
 has said, it " was by no means reasonable ; " for the 
 lower orders had suffered but little from imprison- 
 ment in the Bastille. 
 
 " Nobody proposed, but all believed and all 
 acted. Along the streets, the quays, the bridges, 
 and the boulevards, the crowd shouted to the crowd : 
 ' To the Bastille ! The Bastille ! ' And the tolling 
 of the tocsin sounded in every ear : h la Bastille ! 
 
 " Nobody, I repeat, gave the impulse. The ora- 
 tors of the Palais Koyal passed the time in drawing 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 171 
 
 up a list of proscriptions, in condemning the queen 
 to death, as well as Madame de Polignac, Artois, 
 Flesselles, the provost, and others. The names of 
 the conquerors of the Bastille do not include one 
 of these makers of motions." 
 
 Perhaps we may accept, in the absence of a 
 better, Michelet's explanation of this instinctive 
 action of the mob, as having been caused by the 
 recent publicity given to the experience of one 
 Latude, who was first confined in the Bastille dur- 
 ing the reign of Madame de Pompadour, and had 
 since " worn out all their prisons," and had finally 
 reached the " dunghills of Bicetre," by way of Vin- 
 cennes and Charenton. He was at last released 
 through the pertinacious efforts of one Madame 
 Legros, a poor mercer, who became interested in 
 him by chance, and persevered for three years, 
 meeting with obstacles of every sort and exposed 
 to the vilest calumny, until success came at last, 
 and Latude was released in 1784, after more than 
 forty years of confinement. His release was fol- 
 lowed by an ordinance enjoining intendants never 
 again to incarcerate anybody at the request of 
 families without a well-grounded reason, and in 
 every case to indicate the duration of confinement, 
 — a decidedly naive confession of the degree of 
 arbitrariness which had been reached. 
 
172 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 " From that day " (of Latude's deliverance), says 
 Michelet, " the people of the town and the faubourg, 
 who, in that much-frequented quarter, were ever 
 passing and repassing in its shadow, never failed to 
 curse it." 
 
 It is proper to observe that the state of things 
 which existed in the Bastille when the Cellamare 
 conspirators underwent mock imprisonment there 
 (witness the Eegency Eomances) had been done 
 away with. While other prisons had become more 
 merciful, this had become more cruel. From reign 
 to reign the privileges were taken away, the win- 
 dows were walled up one after another, and new 
 bars were added. The other encroachments by De 
 Launay upon the "liberties of the Bastille" are 
 described by Dumas in the course of the narrative. 
 
 To quote Michelet once more : " The Bastille 
 was known and detested by the whole world. 
 'Bastille' and 'tyranny' were in every language 
 synonymous terms. Every nation, at the news 
 of its destruction, believed it had recovered its 
 liberty." 
 
 The Comte de Se'gur, then ambassador at Kussia, 
 relates that when the news arrived in St. Peters- 
 burg, men of every nation were to be seen shouting 
 and weeping in the streets, and repeating, as they 
 embraced one another : " Who can help weeping for 
 joy ? The Bastille is taken ! " 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 173 
 
 The Due de Liancourt announced the fall of 
 the fortress to Louis XYI. "Why," said the king, 
 " it is downright revolt ! " " It 's more than that," 
 replied Liancourt, " it is revolution." 
 
 Nothing need be added to the description given 
 by Dumas of the painful excitement at Versailles, 
 or of the king's journey to Paris and experience 
 there. The scenes attending the summary ven- 
 geance wreaked upon Foulon and Berthier, who 
 were the very incarnation of the old regime, are 
 also portrayed with the careful attention to detail 
 which is so striking a characteristic of the historical 
 portions of the author's romances ; and the same 
 may be said of the assassination of Flesselles, and, 
 by anticipation, of the events of the 5th of October 
 in the streets of Paris and at the Hotel de Yille, 
 when Stanislas Maillard assumed the leadership of 
 the women (" the Menadic hosts "), and Lafayette 
 was reluctantly compelled to lead the march of 
 the thirty thousand upon Versailles. 
 
 The fall of the Bastille was followed throughout 
 France by the enlistment of National Guards, osten- 
 sibly, in most instances, as a protection against 
 mythical brigands, whose coming in great numbers 
 was continually heralded in every town and village, 
 but who never came. The experience of Pitou, in 
 Haramont, is typical of the great movement which 
 was in progress everywhere. 
 
174 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 " It is a terrible but certain fact," says Michelet, 
 "that in Paris, that city of eight hundred thousand 
 souls, there was no public authority for the space 
 of three months, from July to October." 
 
 Meanwhile the National Assembly was going 
 haltingly on with its work of constitution-making. 
 The session of the 4th of August shines out with 
 peculiar prominence, as it was the occasion of all 
 the privileged classes vying with one another in 
 renouncing their privileges. Such good effect as 
 this tardy renunciation might have had, however, 
 was destroyed by the king's refusal to sanction it, 
 except in so far as he was personally affected. 
 
 Towards the end of August the knotty question 
 of the veto was duly reached: whether the king 
 should have any veto upon the acts of the Assem- 
 bly, and if so, whether it should be absolute or 
 suspensive. 
 
 Throughout Lafayette assumed a position of great 
 prominence in other directions than as commander- 
 in-chief of the National Guard. The " suspensive " 
 veto was finally decided upon, and there was a 
 vague prospect of a return of quieter times, except 
 for the continued scarcity and dearness of grain. 
 " Our rights of man are voted," says Carlyle ; " feu- 
 dalism and all tyranny abolished; yet behold we 
 stand in queue [at the bakers' doors] ! Is it aristo- 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 175 
 
 crat f orestallers — a court still bent on intrigue ? 
 Something is rotten somewhere." 
 
 With hope, terror, suspicion, excitement, succeed- 
 ing one another with bewildering rapidity, comes 
 the certainty that the " (Eil-de-Boauf is rallying/' 
 that the Flanders regiment has been summoned to 
 Versailles, and that some scheme of flight or repres- 
 sion is in the wind. Then comes the news of the 
 banquet of the 1st of October, — of the appearance 
 of the king and queen, the trampling under foot of 
 cockades, and the announcement of Marie Antoi- 
 nette the next day, that she was " enchanted with 
 the events of the supper." Of all fatuous perform- 
 ances of mortals foredoomed to destroy themselves, 
 surely that was the most fatuous. It is significant, 
 by the way, of the extreme caution with which the 
 statements of Madame Campan must be accepted, 
 that in describing this scene, at which she was 
 present, she does not mention the word " cockade," 
 nor does she imply that it was aught but a quiet, 
 orderly function, at which, perhaps, some one or 
 two may have imbibed a thought too freely. 
 
 With regard to the events of the night of 
 October 5-6 at Versailles, nothing need be said, 
 save that the body-guard who heroically defended 
 the door to the queen's apartments, where Georges 
 de Charny is said to have been slain, was one 
 
176 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 Miomandre de Sainte-Marie ; and that although 
 " fractured, slashed, lacerated, left for dead, he has 
 crawled to the (Eil-de-Boeuf, and shall live hon- 
 ored of loyal France." 
 
 In the " Comtesse de Charny " we shall find the 
 king and queen on the road to Paris, on the 6th of 
 October. We shall there meet many old acquaint- 
 ances and make some new ones, and shall follow 
 the setting sun of the time-honored monarchy of 
 France till it sinks at last below the horizon. 
 
ANGE PITOU. 
 
 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 Period, 1789. 
 
 j the King's brothers. 
 
 Louis XVI. , King of Trance. 
 
 Marie Antoinette. 
 
 Comte d'Artois, 
 
 Comte de Provence, 
 
 Princesse de Lamballe. 
 
 The Dauphin. 
 
 Madame Boyale. 
 
 Louis Philippe Joseph, Due d'Orleans, afterwards Philippe 
 
 Iilgalite. 
 M. de Calonne, Comptroller-General. 
 M. de Crosme, Lieutenant of police. 
 Comte de Launay, Governor of the Bastile. 
 Comtesse Jules de Polignac, favorite of the Queen. 
 Diane, Duchesse de Polignac, her sister-in-law. 
 Madame Campan, waiting-woman to the Queen. 
 Madame de Tourzel, governess of the royal children. 
 Marquis de Lafayette, Commander-in-Chief of the National 
 
 Guards of Trance, 
 Baron de Necker. 
 Madame de Stael, his daughter. 
 
 M. TURGOT. 
 
 Madame Hague, ) „ j. .-, ^ 
 
 m J attending on the Queen. 
 
 Madame Thibault, ) 
 
 Comte Olivier de Charny, Lieutenant of the Queen's Guards. 
 
 Andree de Taverney, Comtesse de Charny. 
 
178 
 
 LIST OF CHAKACTEKS. 
 
 brothers of Comte de Charny. 
 
 gentlemen of the King's household. 
 
 officers commanding the Royal 
 Troops. 
 
 Baron George de Charny, 
 vlcomte isidor de charny, 
 Prince de Beauvau, 
 
 M. DE YlLLEROY, 
 
 M. de Nesle, 
 
 M. DE VlLLEQUIER, 
 
 Prince de Conde, 
 Prince de Lambesq, 
 Marechal de Broglie, 
 comte d'estaing, 
 M. de Dreux Breze, 
 Baron de Besenval, 
 M. de Narbonne Pritztar, 
 M. de Salkenaym, 
 M. de Biron, 
 
 M. DE LUSIGNAN, 
 
 M. de Perse val, aide-de-camp of Comte d'Estaing. 
 
 M. de Clermont-Tonnere, "\ 
 
 M. de Sartine, 
 
 Marie de Laval, 
 
 Madame de Magneville, 
 
 M. de Coigny, 
 
 Baron de Breteuil, 
 
 m. de la rochefoucault, 
 
 COMTE DE MaUREPAS, 
 
 Comte de Machatjt, 
 M. de Brienne, 
 M. de Varicourt, 
 Chevalier d'Abzac, Chief of the Royal Stable. 
 Count Cagliostro. 
 Dr. Honore Gilbert. 
 Sebastien Gilbert, his son. 
 Abbe Portier, a schoolmaster. 
 
 Louis Ange Pitou, one of his pupils, afterwards Commander 
 of the National Guard of Haramont. 
 
 friends of Marie Antoinette. 
 
 of the Prench Court. 
 
LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 
 179 
 
 Rose Angelique Pitou, Pitou's aunt. 
 
 Billot, a farmer of Villers-Cotteret, afterwards leading the 
 
 attack on the Bastille. 
 Catherine, his daughter. 
 Madame Billot. 
 
 Camille Desmoulins, ^ 
 
 Jean Paul Marat, 
 Stanislaus Maillard, an usher of 
 
 the Chatelet Court, r Revolutionists. 
 
 Madeleine Chambry, a flower-girl, 
 Verriere, a deformed dwarf, 
 Danton, 
 Elie, formerly an officer in the Queen's " 
 
 regiment, taking part in the 
 
 Hullin, a chasseur, V attack on the 
 
 Gonchon, the " Mirabeau of the People," Bastille. 
 
 Arne, Challot, and de Lepine, soldiers, > 
 Gabriel Honore Mirabeau 
 
 members of the National 
 Assembly. 
 
 M, de S IE YES, 
 
 M. Guillotin, M.D., 
 
 M. Monnier, 
 
 M. de Flesselles, Provost of the Merchants of Paris. 
 
 M. de Bailly, his successor. 
 
 M. de Saint-Priest, minister for Paris. 
 
 M. de Eoulon. 
 
 M. Berthier de Sauvigny, his son-in-law. 
 
 Saint-Jean, Foulon's servant. 
 
 M. Rappe, syndic. 
 
 M. Delayigne, President of the Electors. 
 
 M. Riviere, an Elector. 
 
 M. Acloque, President of the St. Marcel District. 
 
 Abbe Lefevre d'Ormesson. 
 
 Abbe Delille. 
 
 Abbe Maury. 
 
 Abbe Beradier, Principal of the College of Louis-le-Grand. 
 
180 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 
 Doctor Mesmer. 
 
 M. de Losme, Major of the Bastille. 
 
 Reveillon, a paper-manufacturer. 
 
 Master Farollet, tennis-master-in-chief to Dae d'Orleans. 
 
 Pasdeloup, a police ageut. 
 
 Captain Goudran, of the National Guard. 
 
 Sergeant Rigold. 
 
 M. Cornu, a hatter. 
 
 M. Dulauroy, a tailor. 
 
 Father Clovis, a hermit. 
 
 M. Furth, a pamphleteer. 
 
 Father Lefranc, a farmer. 
 
 M. Lonfre, Mayor of Haramont. 
 
 Claude Tellier, a woodcutter, Pitou's lieutenant. 
 
 Desire Maniquet, a poaclier, Sergeant of Pitou's Company. 
 
 Bastien Godinet, one of Pitou's soldiers. 
 
 Labrie, a lackey of M. de Flesselles. 
 
 Barnaut, a stable-boy on Billot's farm. 
 
 Guyon, a turnkey in the Bastille. 
 
 Jean Bechade, 
 
 Bernard Laroche, 
 
 Jean La.caurege, 
 
 Antoine Pujade, 
 
 M. de White, 
 
 comte de solage, 
 
 Tavernier, 
 
 prisoners in the Bastille rescued by the 
 people. 
 
LA COMTESSE DE CHARNY, 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 " Be it understood that we are writing history, and 
 not romance/' says the author more than once in 
 the course of these volumes. The statement is 
 incontestable in the sense that the strictly roman- 
 tic portions of the story — those which deal with 
 fictitious personages and events — furnish but a 
 trifling part of the interest. But, on the other 
 hand, it must be said that he who writes of " the 
 thing we call French Revolution " as it was, who 
 takes its leading figures for his heroes, and de- 
 scribes its lurid scenes and incidents, ranging from 
 almost incredible grandeur to quite incredible in- 
 famy and horror, — such a one, we say, could 
 hardly fail, were he the least interesting of writ- 
 ers, to produce a work beside which the most 
 intense creation of the brain of the novelist sinks 
 into insignificance. 
 
 In " Ange Pitou " the historical thread is broken 
 at the invasion of the (Eil-de-Boeuf by the Pari- 
 sian populace on the night of the Fifth and Sixth 
 
182 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 of October, and the fortunate, as well as courageous 
 and tactful, interposition of Lafayette. In the 
 "Comtesse de Charny" the narrative is resumed 
 with the forced journey of the royal family from 
 Versailles to Paris on the Sixth of October, and is 
 continued, with substantial accuracy as to all the 
 main events and innumerable minor ones, down to 
 the Twenty-first of January, 1793, when Louis XVL, 
 the well-meaning but fatally weak monarch, whom 
 Carlyle calls the " unhappiest of Human Solecisms," 
 paid the penalty of his own weakness and inde- 
 cision, and the crimes and oppression of his 
 ancestors. 
 
 Any attempt to sketch roughly these momentous 
 years within the reasonable and proper limits of a 
 note of this sort would necessarily result in some- 
 thing very like an abstract of the work to which it 
 is introductory. 
 
 The most striking thing about this tremendous 
 upheaval which shook the whole world, whether 
 we read of it as told by Dumas in the various 
 romances of the Marie Antoinette cycle, or in the 
 numerous strictly historical works devoted to the 
 subject, is the utter fatuity with which the king 
 and queen — or, perhaps, the king under the in- 
 fluence of the queen — persistently misused, or 
 refused to use at all, the opportunities that were 
 afforded, in the first place to guide the ^Revolution, 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 183 
 
 and, in the second place, when it had become too 
 late for that, to escape by flight the consequences of 
 their own folly. 
 
 It is a most significant fact, and one which 
 explains much that would otherwise remain inex- 
 plicable, that previous to the flight to Varennes the 
 French people had in but very few instances ceased 
 to be monarchist at heart, and could very easily 
 have been won back to the loyal support of Louis, 
 had he chosen to adopt and consistently follow such 
 a course of action as was promised, for instance, by 
 his visit to the Assembly on the 4th of February, 
 1790, when that body was wandering in the mazes 
 of constitution-making (whence its name "Consti- 
 tuent "), — had he chosen, that is to say, to accept in 
 good faith the limited functions of kingship which 
 that instrument allotted to him, and to be himself 
 the leader of a peaceful revolution. 
 
 Towards the close of 1790, while disorganization 
 and anarchy were making rapid progress, Mirabeau, 
 "desperate of constitution-building under such ac- 
 companiments," entered into those negotiations with 
 the court which are described with much fulness 
 and practical accuracy by Dumas, accompanied by 
 a marvellously truthful portrayal of him who was, 
 beyond question, the grandest man, in everything but 
 morals, of the whole revolutionary period. What 
 might have been the result had he been dealt with 
 
184 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 honestly and with sincerity, it is perhaps useless to 
 conjecture. Whether or not his ambition to save 
 the monarchy was the offspring of his ambition to 
 occupy the same position with respect to the queen 
 that Mazarin is supposed to have occupied with re- 
 spect to Anne of Austria, is of small consequence. 
 It is certain that he was tricked and fooled and 
 played with, merely to gain time, while the hope of 
 foreign interference was growing in the queen's 
 breast ; and it is equally certain that with his death, 
 on the 2d of April, 1791, the last chance of guiding 
 or controlling the Eevolution passed away. 
 
 And so was it with Lameth, and so, too, with 
 Barnave, whose devotion seems to have made some 
 impression upon Marie Antoinette, but whose only 
 reward for his sincere purpose to serve her was pre- 
 mature death. 
 
 When Gamain, — of whom we believe no writer, 
 whatever his predilections concerning the Eevolution, 
 has ever written except in terms of disgust and 
 loathing, — when Gamain turned upon his bene- 
 factor, and disclosed the existence of the secret 
 cupboard, the correspondence of both Barnave and 
 Mirabeau came to light, and the evidence of their 
 " treason " was overwhelming. Poor Barnave was 
 then in prison as a " suspect " at Grenoble. He was 
 brought to Paris, and guillotined in due course. 
 
 The greater statesman was beyond the reach 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 185 
 
 of the guillotine, but his remains reposed in the 
 Pantheon, and his bust was a prominent object in 
 the Hall of the Jacobins. The latter, denounced by 
 Eobespierre from the tribune, was cast upon the 
 floor and shattered. But the crowning dishonor 
 was reserved for a later period. 
 
 " It was on a dull day in autumn, in the tragical 
 year 1794, when France had almost finished ex- 
 terminating herself, — it was then that, having 
 destroyed the living, she set about destroying the 
 dead, and banished her most glorious son from her 
 heart, performing this last grievous act with savage 
 
 joy." 
 
 Thus Michelet, who, however, defends the action 
 of the Convention, in pursuance of whose decree 
 the remains of Mirabeau were removed from the 
 Pantheon, and transported to Clamart, the burial- 
 place for executed criminals, in the Faubourg Saint 
 Marceau. 
 
 It may be worth while to note that the functions 
 of friend and physician to Mirabeau, here assigned 
 to Gilbert, were really performed by Cabanis, who 
 published an account of his illustrious patient's last 
 illness and death. From this contemporary source 
 Dumas has drawn largely. 
 
 It is very difficult, after making all possible al- 
 lowance for every consideration which could be 
 humanly expected to weigh with the most exalted 
 
186 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 personages, to explain the conduct of the king and 
 queen in connection with their attempt to join 
 Bouille" and his army at Montmddy. They still 
 believed, if the king may be said to have had any 
 belief, that the Eevolution might still be con- 
 trolled from outside, and therefore resolved at last 
 upon taking the step which had been urged many 
 times by their sincere friends when secrecy would 
 have been unnecessary. But at this time — June, 
 1791 — they were substantially prisoners in the 
 Tuileries, as they had learned when they made the 
 attempt to go to Saint Cloud in April. 
 
 Under those conditions, what steps did they take 
 to insure secrecy, and to slip away unrecognized 
 and unnoticed ? Let us listen to Michelet on this 
 subject : — 
 
 "This journey to Varennes was a miracle of 
 imprudence. It is sufficient to make a statement 
 of what common-sense required, and then to follow 
 an opposite course ; by adopting this method, if all 
 memoirs were to vanish, the story might still be 
 written. 
 
 " First of all, the queen orders an outfit to be 
 made for herself and her children two or three 
 months beforehand, as if to give notice of her 
 departure. Next, she bespeaks a magnificent trav- 
 elling-case, like the one she had already, — a com- 
 plicated piece of furniture that contained all that 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 187 
 
 could have been desired for a voyage around the 
 globe. Then, again, instead of taking an ordinary 
 carriage of modest appearance, she charges Fersen 
 to have a huge, capacious berlin constructed, on 
 which might be fitted and piled a heap of trunks, 
 boxes, portmanteaus, and whatever else causes 
 a coach to be particularly conspicuous on the road. 
 This is not all; this coach was to be followed by 
 another full of female attendants ; whilst before and 
 behind, three body-guards were to gallop as couriers 
 in their new bright-yellow jackets, calculated to 
 attract attention, and make people believe, at the 
 very least, that they were retainers of the Prince 
 de Conde', the head and front of the emigration ! 
 Doubtless these men are familiar with the route ? 
 No, they had never travelled it before ! But they 
 must be resolute fellows, armed to the teeth ? 
 They had nothing but small hunting-knives ! The 
 king informed them that they would find arms in 
 the carriage ; but Fersen, the queen's man, doubt- 
 less fearing on her account the danger of armed 
 resistance, had forgotten the weapons ! 
 
 "All this is ridiculous want of foresight. But 
 now let us glance at the wretched, ignoble side of 
 the picture. The king allows himself to be dressed 
 as a valet, and disguises himself in a gray coat 
 and a little wig. He is now Durand, the valet-de- 
 chambre. These humiliating particulars are in the 
 
188 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 simple narrative of the Duchesse d'Angouleme 
 (Madame Koyale); the fact is also stated in the 
 passport given to the queen and Madame de 
 Tourzel, as a Kussian lady, the Baroness de Korff. 
 Thus this lady is so intimate with her valet-de- 
 chambre (an indecorous arrangement, which alone 
 revealed everything) that she places him in her 
 carriage face to face, and knee to knee ! " 
 
 And again: "A very resolute soldier, recom- 
 mended by M. de Bouille', was to have entered the 
 carriage, to give answers when required, and to 
 conduct the whole affair. But Madame de Tourzel, 
 the governess of the royal children, insisted upon 
 the privilege of her office. By virtue of the oath 
 she had taken, it was her duty, her right, not to 
 quit the children ; and the word ' oath ' made a 
 great impression on Louis XVI. Moreover, it was 
 a thing unheard of in the annals of etiquette for 
 the Children of France to travel without a gover- 
 ness. Therefore the governess took her seat in the 
 carriage, and not the soldier; and instead of a 
 useful man, they had a useless woman. The expe- 
 dition had no leader, nobody to direct it ; it was 
 left to go alone and at random." 
 
 In the face of these and many other similar and 
 indubitable facts, it is not hard to believe the anec- 
 dote of the queen's childish exploit when she en- 
 countered Lafayette in the Place du Carrousel. 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 189 
 
 In the details of the flight, Dumas follows 
 Michelet very closely, assigning to the Charnys 
 and to Billot parts which were actually played — 
 in many instances — by unknown persons. 
 
 For example, it was not Billot, but " a scarecrow 
 of an herb-merchant " who noticed the grand new 
 berlin in the wood of Bondy, and furnished the 
 needed information as to the road the fugitives had 
 taken. So Drouet, when he rode out of Sainte 
 Menehould, was " watched and closely followed by 
 a horseman who understood his intention, and 
 would, perhaps, have killed him ; but he galloped 
 across the country and plunged into the woods, 
 where it was impossible to overtake him." And 
 Bomceuf arrived at Yarennes from Paris, accom- 
 panied by " an officer of the National Guard, — a 
 man of gloomy countenance, evidently fatigued, but 
 agitated and excited, wearing plain, unpowdered 
 hair, and a shirt open at the neck." 
 
 It was Count Fersen, a Swede, who drove the 
 berlin to Bondy. He seems to have been influenced 
 solely by attachment to the queen. He disappears 
 from history from the time he left the coach at 
 Bondy. 
 
 The three body-guards who accompanied the 
 flight were Valory, Maiden, and Du Moustier. 
 They were gagged, and bound upon the seat of 
 the carriage on the return to Paris. 
 
190 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 Madame Campan, the queen's femme-de-chamhre, 
 is authority for many details given by Dumas, — 
 as, for instance, the secrecy observed by Marie 
 Antoinette in her interviews with Barnave, and as 
 to the precautions adopted with respect to food, 
 having their source in the return to the Tuileries 
 of the Palais-Eoyal pastry-cook, who was such a 
 furious Jacobin. 
 
 Madame Campan also testifies to the enormous 
 appetite of the king, and to the queen's mortifica- 
 tion because it never abated ; nor did he put any 
 restraint upon it, no matter how painful or humili- 
 ating were his circumstances. 
 
 The League of Pilnitz, in August, 1791, made the 
 king's eventual deposition inevitable, although it 
 was postponed for a year. The manifesto issued 
 by the parties to the league aroused furious indig- 
 nation in France. The flames which it kindled 
 were not extinguished till twenty-five years later. 
 
 In September, the Constituent Assembly, having 
 previously, upon Eobespierre's motion, declared its 
 members ineligible for the succeeding Assembly, de- 
 clared its sessions to be ended, and went its way. 
 
 On October 1, the Legislative Assembly, the first 
 and last body elected under the Constitution, began 
 its life of a year. 
 
 Its time was wasted in " debates, futilities, and 
 staggering parliamentary procedure," amid frequent 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 191 
 
 changes of ministry, growing anxiety concerning 
 foreign invasion, and such, internal episodes as that 
 of Avignon, where the reprisals for the death of 
 L'Escuyer, under the lead of Jourdan Coupe-Tete, 
 were immeasurably worse than is here hinted at. 
 The Tour de la G-laciere was the theatre of scenes 
 at the mere thought of which the heart sickens. 
 
 In those chapters of the " Comtesse de Charny " 
 which deal with the ministry of Dumouriez, and 
 the events accompanying and succeeding it, we 
 have some welcome glimpses of "that queen-like 
 burgher-woman, beautiful Amazonian — graceful to 
 the eye ; more so to the mind," — the daughter of 
 Phlipon, the Paris engraver, and wife of Eoland de 
 la Platriere. " The creature of sincerity and nature " 
 — so she has been described — " in an age of arti- 
 ficiality, pollution, and cant ; there, in her still 
 completeness, in her. still invincibility, she, if thou 
 knew it, is the noblest of all living Frenchwomen." 
 
 In due time the Girondist deputies, to the num- 
 ber of some twenty or more, succumbed to the 
 Mountain, and ascended the fatal platform, from 
 which they might have saved Louis XVL, had they 
 had the courage to vote in accordance with their 
 acknowledged convictions. 
 
 On the 8th of November, 1793, a month after the 
 death of the queen, and within a day or two of the 
 last appearance upon earth of Madame Du Barry, 
 
192 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 who has been called the "gateway of the Kevolu- 
 tion," and the infamous Philippe figalitd, Madame 
 Eoland followed her associates to the Place de la 
 KeVolution. 
 
 Her memoirs were written during the five months 
 she was in prison. 
 
 Events marched fast during the early summer 
 of 1792, following the declaration of war against 
 Austria in April. The Clubs, journalistic organiza- 
 tions, and Sections were growing ever more violent 
 and desperate, and on June 20th came the immense 
 procession, which eventually invaded the Tuileries, 
 — an occasion more remarkable for what it fore- 
 boded than for what actually happened. 
 
 Lafayette's unexpected appearance in the As- 
 sembly a week later put the finishing touch to the 
 extinction of his popularity and influence upon 
 events. 
 
 The scene in the Assembly on July 6th, deri- 
 sively called the " Baiser l'amourette," was followed 
 by Barbaroux's famous despatch to Eebecqui for 
 " five hundred men who know how to die." 
 
 The solemn proclamation of the " Country in 
 Danger " on July 2 2d, the Prussian declaration of 
 war on the 24th, and the celebrated, but ill-advised, 
 manifesto of the Duke of Brunswick carried the 
 excitement and indignation of France to the boiling 
 point. The arrival at Paris of the black-browed 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 193 
 
 Marseillais, after "wending their wild way from 
 the extremity of French land, through unknown 
 cities, toward unknown destiny, with a purpose 
 that they know," inspired to frenzy by the soul- 
 stirring strains of the "Marseillaise," the "luckiest 
 musical composition ever promulgated," — their arri- 
 val at Paris, we say, in the last days of July, fur- 
 nished the only ingredient that was lacking to 
 make the seething mass of the population effer- 
 vesce, and the Tenth of August was the inevitable 
 sequel. 
 
 Of all the participants in the events of that 
 dreadful day, the interest of humanity must ever 
 attach most compassionately to the devoted Swiss. 
 The ten score or more of courtiers who had rushed 
 to the Tuileries to defend monarchy in its last 
 ditch succeeded in escaping in large numbers when 
 they found themselves shamelessly deserted by 
 those for whom they had come to lay down their 
 lives. Some there were who remained and faced 
 certain death heroically ; but they were Frenchmen 
 dying for what they thought a consecrated cause. 
 How different was it with the Swiss ! They were 
 mere " hirelings," as they had been often sneeringly 
 called; by birth and education, their sympathies 
 were on the popular side ; they had no interest in 
 maintaining their position, except to obey the order 
 of him to whom they had sold their services, and 
 
194 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 by him they had been heartlessly abandoned. They 
 knew not how to act: "one duty only is clear to 
 them, that of standing by their post ; and they will 
 perform that." 
 
 Westermann pleaded with them in German, and 
 the Marseillais implored them " in hot Provencal 
 speech and pantomime." Let them stand aside, and 
 their lives were saved. They stood fast, and what 
 followed is known of all men. 
 
 The consequences of the Tenth of August were 
 not slow to follow, as the Assembly in the presence 
 of the king voted that the " Hereditary Eepresenta- 
 tive" (which was the constitutional title of the 
 king) be suspended. It also voted that a National 
 Convention be summoned, by election, to provide 
 for the future. 
 
 Meanwhile, and until that Convention assembled, 
 although the Legislature continued to sit, the In- 
 surrectionary Commune, self-constituted, was really 
 supreme at Paris, and Danton held the seals of the 
 Department of Justice. 
 
 The removal of the royal family to the Temple, 
 and their life there, are told by Dumas in much 
 detail and with complete fidelity to history, which 
 necessarily relies for many of its facts upon the 
 narratives of the valets-de-chambre. 
 
 We need add nothing either to what our author 
 has to say with relation to the " Massacres of Sep- 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 195 
 
 tember " at La Force and the other prisons, except 
 that the massacred amounted to one thousand and 
 eighty-nine, all told, and that Robespierre " nearly 
 wept " at the thought that one innocent person was 
 slain ! It is said that the bell of Saint-G-ermain 
 l'Auxerrois, on which the tocsin was sounded for the 
 massacres to begin, was the identical metal on which 
 the signal was given for the Saint Bartholomew, two 
 hundred and twenty years before. 
 
 Twenty-three theatres were open while the 
 slaughter was in progress ! 
 
 Both Sombreuil and Cazotte were spared, at the 
 intercession of their daughters, but both subse- 
 quently came to the guillotine during the " Terror.'* 
 
 Maillard's appearance as presiding officer of the 
 tribunal at La Force was his last in history. 
 
 The most important incidents of the famous sit- 
 ting of the Convention at which the death of Louis 
 was decreed, mainly through the weakness of 
 Yergniaud and his fellow Girondists, are described 
 by Dumas in accordance with all the authorities, 
 and the same may be said of his description of the 
 king's last hours and execution. 
 
 The author's frequent eulogistic references to 
 Michelet, whom, as we have said, he follows closely 
 in many portions of the narrative, make it proper 
 to say that the impartiality of that writer is by no 
 means beyond question. In a note to one of the 
 
196 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 earlier romances of this series, we have adverted to 
 the charge he has brought against Louis XV. 
 apparently without authority, and that charge is 
 echoed by Dumas in these volumes almost every 
 time that Comte Louis de Narbonne is mentioned. 
 
 It is natural that so earnest a partisan of the 
 Eevolution should be influenced by bitter feelings 
 towards England for the part she played under the 
 leadership of Pitt and Burke. But it can hardly be 
 claimed that he is justified in characterizing Burke 
 as " a talented, but passionate and venal Irishman," 
 who " was paid by his adversary, Mr. Pitt," for " a 
 furious philippic against the Eevolution;" or in 
 speaking of that statesman's work as " an infamous 
 book, wild with rage, full of calumny, scurrilous 
 abuse, and insulting buffoonery ; " or, again, in re- 
 ferring to him as a man "possessed of brilliant 
 eloquence, but devoid of ideas and of frivolous 
 character," — a man " who makes the better actor 
 because he acts his part in earnest, and because his 
 interior emptiness enables him the better to adopt 
 and urge the ideas of others ; " or in making the 
 statement that "England never had, nor will she 
 ever have, any great moralist or jurisconsult." 
 
 Olivier de Charny is a most perfect type of 
 many noble-hearted Frenchmen who sacrificed their 
 lives without a murmur in behalf of what they 
 believed to be a holy cause, convinced though they 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 197 
 
 were of trie comparative unworthiness of those who 
 stood for that cause. It was fitting that Andre'e, 
 whose only happiness in life had come to her 
 through him, and whose hopes of happiness died 
 with him, should have turned aside from the 
 thought of life without him. 
 
 In view of the terrible months that followed the 
 death of the king, happy were they who, like Gil- 
 bert and Billot, turned their backs upon their coun- 
 try, and sought true freedom under the flag of the 
 new Eepublic across the sea. 
 
 In the last volume of the series, "Chevalier de 
 Maison Eouge," the author has taken for his theme 
 the agony of Marie Antoinette during the eight 
 months that intervened between the king's death 
 and her own. We shall there make the acquaint- 
 ance of one whose devotion was to the person of 
 the queen even more than to the dying cause which 
 she represented. 
 
LA COMTESSE DE CHARNY, 
 
 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 
 Period, 1789-1794. 
 
 Louis XVI., King of Trance. 
 Marie Antoinette. 
 
 Madam^RoyIlk, j «»e royal children. 
 
 Madame Elizabeth, the King's sister. 
 
 Comte de Provence, ) ■ 
 
 Comie d'Abtois, j brothers of the Km S- 
 
 Princesse de Lamballe, Superintendent of the royal household. 
 
 M. de Penthievre, her father-in-law. 
 
 Madame de Tourzel, governess of the royal children. 
 
 Madame Misery, "| 
 
 Madame Campan, V the Queen's waiting-women. 
 
 Madame Neuville, J 
 
 Weber, confidential servant to Marie Antoinette. 
 
 Doctor Louis, Marie Antoinette's physician. 
 
 Madame Brunier, the Dauphin's chambermaid. 
 
 M. de Breze, Master of Ceremonies. 
 
 La Chapelle, the King's steward. 
 
 MM. Hue, Darey, and Thierry, attendants of the King. 
 
 Prince de Poix, 
 
 M. de Saint-Pardon, 
 
 Baron d'Aubier, 
 
 MM. de Goguelat and de Chamille, 
 
 Clery, the King's valet at the Temple. 
 
 M. Leonard, the Queen's hairdresser. 
 
 gentlemen of the 
 
 . King's household after 
 
 the 10th of August. 
 
200 
 
 LIST OF CHAEACTEES. 
 
 ROYALISTS. 
 
 PRINCE DE CONDE. 
 DUC DE LlAN COURT. 
 DUC DE LA ROCHEPOUCAULT. 
 COMTE DE LA MaRCK. 
 COMTESSE DE LA MaRCK. 
 
 Comte Louis de Narbonne. 
 
 COMTE FeRSEN. 
 
 Baroness de Stael. 
 Prince de Lambesq. 
 
 Marquis de Favras. 
 Baron de Breteuil. 
 Due de Mailly. 
 Marechal de Mouchy. 
 Marechal de Noailles. 
 Due de Castries. 
 Comte d'Innisdal. 
 Due Charles de Lorraine 
 Abbe Sicard. 
 
 MM. Viomesnil, de la Chatre, Lecrosne, Gosse, Yilliers, 
 
 and Bridaud. 
 M. de Dampierre, Chevalier of the Order of Saint Louis. 
 Pierre Victor Besenval, Inspector-General of Swiss. 
 M. Laporte, Superintendent of the Civil List. 
 M. de Yilleroy, of the King's household. 
 M. Pastoret, a member of the Legislative Assembly. 
 M. de Brissac, Commander of the King's Constitutional Guard. 
 M. de Sombreuil, Governor of Hotel des Invalides. 
 Mademoiselle de Sombreuil, his daughter. 
 M. Acloque, a Commander of the National Guard. 
 MM. de Carteja, Clermont, d'Amboise, Tourcaty, d'Amblay, 
 Marquie, and Merci d'Argenteau. 
 
 Princesse de la Tremouille. 
 Madame de Mackau. 
 Madame de la Roche Aymon 
 Madame Ginestous. 
 Princesse de Tarente. 
 M. de Malden, 
 M. de Valory, 
 
 Baron de Batz. 
 Parisot, a journalist. 
 Jacques Cazotte. 
 Mademoiselle Cazotte, his 
 daughter. 
 
 } accompanying the royal family 
 in the flight from Paris. 
 
 Comtesse de Charny, the Queen's maid-of-honor. 
 Vicomte Isidore de Charny, Comte de Charny's brother. 
 
LIST OF CHAEACTEES. 201 
 
 killed by the mob of 
 
 August 10th. 
 
 LOYALISTS. 
 
 Abbe Bouyon, a dramatic author, 
 M. de Suleatj, a Royalist pamphleteer. 
 MM. Vigier and Solhiniac, of the 
 old Royal Guard, 
 
 M. DE MoNTJIORIN, \ . 
 
 Abbe de Rastignac, a religious author, L™^ ^^ P " 
 Abbe Leneant, an ex-chaplain of the King, J 
 
 Royalist Officers assisting in the Flight of the Royal Family. 
 
 Marquis de Bouille, Governor-General of the City of Metz. 
 
 Coute Louis de Bouille, ) hig SQns> 
 
 M. Jules de Bouille, ) 
 
 Due de Choiseul. Marquis de Dandoins. 
 
 Baron de Mandell. Colonel de Damas. 
 
 Lieutenant Bondet. Captain Deslon. 
 
 Adjutant Eocq. Captain Guntzer. 
 
 Sergeant Saint Charles. Sergeant la Potterie. 
 
 Royalist Officers defending the Tuileries. 
 
 M. d'Hervilly, commanding the Chevaliers of Saint Louis and 
 
 Constitutional Guard. 
 General Mandat, a Commander of the National Guard. 
 M. Maillardot, commanding the Swiss. 
 M. de Chantereine, Colonel of the King's Constitutional 
 
 Guard. 
 Chevalier Charles d'Autichamp. 
 Salis Lizers, Major Reading, and Captain Durler, Swiss 
 
 officers. 
 MM. Rulhieres, Yerdiere, de la Chesnaye, and Eorestier 
 
 de Saint-Venant. 
 
202 LIST OF CHAKACTERS. 
 
 REVOLUTIONISTS. 
 
 Jean Paul Marat, editor of " L'Ami du Peuple." 
 Maximilien de Robespierre, an advocate of Arras, member 
 
 of the National Assembly and of the National Convention, 
 Danton, Minister of Justice and Member of the National 
 
 Convention. 
 Louis Philippe Joseph, Due d'Orleans, afterwards called 
 
 Philippe Ii]galite\ 
 Rouget de L'Isle, an engineering officer of Strasburg, author 
 
 of "La Marseillaise." 
 Santerre, a brewer, General-in-Chief of a Battalion of the 
 
 National Guard. 
 Gonchon, " the Mirabeau of the People." 
 Fouquier Tinville, Attorney-General of the Revolutionary 
 
 Tribunal. 
 Antoine Saint Just, 
 blllaud de yarennes, 
 Herault de Sechelles, 
 Collet d'Herbois, 
 Legendre, a butcher, 
 Anacharsis Clootz, 
 Thuriot, called " the king-killer," 
 Couthon, a cripple, 
 Fabre d'Eglantine, 
 Lepelletier de Saint Fargeau, 
 Bishop Gregoire, 
 
 Maillard, Sheriff of the Court of the Chatelet. 
 Theroigne du Mericourt, a courtesan. 
 Thomas Paine. Due d'Aiguillon. 
 
 M. Robert. Fournier, an American. 
 
 Westermann, a Prussian. 
 Nicholas, a butcher. 
 Prosper Verrieres, a deformed dwarf. 
 Henriot, the master of the guillotine. 
 
 members of the National 
 
 Convention condemning 
 
 the King. 
 
LIST OF CHARACTERS. 203 
 
 RE VOL UTIONISTS. 
 
 Simon, a cobbler, in charge of the Dauphin at the Temple. 
 
 Messieuks Isabet, father and son. 
 
 Madame de Rochereul, a spy at the Tuileries. 
 
 Chabot, one of the authors of the "Catechism for Sans 
 
 Culottes." 
 Lacroix, a lawyer, member of the Legislative Assembly. 
 Bishop Torne, of the Legislative Assembly. 
 Andre Chenier, a poet. 
 
 Bertrand Barrere, member of the National Convention. 
 Count d'Oyat, a bastard son of Louis XV. 
 Virchaux, a Swiss. Brtjsne, a type-setter. 
 
 Bonjour, a clerk in the Navy Department. 
 Madame Candeille, of the Comedie Francaise, actress, poetess, 
 
 musician. 
 Nicholas Claude Gamain, master locksmith to the King. 
 Matthew Jouve, otherwise known as Jourdan \ . 
 
 the headsman. V ° 
 
 MM. Lescuyer, Duprat, and Mainvielle, j Revollltl0msts - 
 Charlot, a barber, ) murderers of Princesse de 
 
 Grison, Rodi, and Mamin, ) Lamballe. 
 
 M. Huguenin, President of the Commune. 
 M. Tallien, Secretary of the Commune. 
 MM. Manuel and Chaumette, Procureurs of the Commune. 
 Luzouski, a Pole, member of the Communal Council. 
 Panis, friend of Danton and 
 
 brother-in-law of Santerre, 
 MM. Jordeuil and Duplain, 
 Sergent, a copper-plate engraver, 
 MM. Deforgues, Guermer, Dufort, Lenfant, and Leclerc, 
 
 of the Vigilance Committee. 
 Cambon, Guardian of the Public Treasures. 
 Mouchet, a crippled dwarf, Justice of the Peace from the 
 
 Marais District. 
 
 of the Communal Council 
 and Vigilance Committee. 
 
204 
 
 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 
 RE VOL UTIONISTS. 
 
 Lubin, a municipal officer proclaiming the Republic. 
 
 Boucher Rene, ^| 
 
 Boucher Saint-Sauveur, J- municipal officials. 
 
 MM. Boirie and Le Roulx, J 
 
 M. Giraud, City Architect of Paris. 
 
 REVOLUTIONARY JOURNALISTS. 
 
 Camille Desmoulins, styling himself " Procureur-General de 
 
 la Lanterne." 
 Jacques Rene Hebert, editor of Father Duchene. 
 Louis Stanislaus Freron, editor of " Le Moniteur." 
 
 LOUSTALOT, It r. -r,/ i • -. -^ • » 
 
 r»™T« T -« -d™,,^™™™ f editors of "Revolutions de Pans. 
 Citizen Proudhomme, J 
 
 M. Carra, editor of " Annales Patriotiques." 
 Bonneville, editor of " The Iron Mouth." 
 Jean Lambert Tallien, editor of " L'Ami des Citoyens." 
 Mademoiselle de Keralio, writer for the " Mercury," after- 
 wards Madame Robert. 
 
 GIRONDISTS. 
 
 Jeanne Marie Roland de la Platiere. 
 
 Manon Jeanne Phlipon,1iIs wife, usually called Madame Roland. 
 
 Charles Barbaroux, of Marseilles, 
 
 M. Rebecqui, his friend, 
 
 M. Grangeneuve, a Bordeaux advocate, 
 
 Jeanne Pierre Brissot, 
 
 Jerome Petion, 
 
 Rabaut Saint-^tienne, 
 
 GlREY DuPRE, 
 
 Abbe Fauchet, 
 
 mm. louvet, isnard, boyer fonfrede 
 
 Condorcet, Yergniaud, Gensonne, 
 
 GUADET, LANJUINAIS, VaLAZE, 
 
 Lasource, Birotteau, Ducos, 
 
 DUCHATEL, 
 
 members of the Na- 
 tional Convention. 
 
LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 
 205 
 
 leaders of the 
 » Constitutional 
 Party. 
 
 members 
 
 of the 
 
 Jacobin 
 
 Club. 
 
 M. Bailly, an astronomer, Provost of the 
 
 Merchants of Paris, 
 
 Pierre Joseph Marie 'j , _ 2 . __. 
 
 -d I members ot the JNa- 
 
 DE BaRNAVE, >■ , . . . . . 
 
 . -rx tional Assembly, 
 
 Adrien Duport, } J - 
 
 M. la Harpe, author of " Melanie," 
 
 M. Andrieux, an author. 
 
 M. Sedaine, a gem-cutter, 
 
 Chamfort, poet-laureate, 
 
 Marie-Joseph Chenier, author of " Charles IX." 
 
 M. Laclos, author of " Les Liaisons Dangereuses,' 
 
 Lais, a singer, 
 
 Napoleon Bonaparte, a Lieutenant of Artillery, 
 
 Talma, ) David, ) . 
 
 hum. I act0rS ' Veenet, J P amters ' 
 
 MM. Barras, Chodieu, Chapellier, and Mont 
 
 LOSIER, 
 
 Honore Gabriel Yictor Biquetti, Comte de 
 Mir abe au, 
 
 Doctor Gtjillotin, inventor of the guillotine, 
 
 Charles de Lameth, 
 
 Alexandre de Beauharnais, 
 
 Abbes de Sieves and Maury, 
 
 Prieur de la Marne, 
 
 Regnault de Saint Jean d' Angel y, 
 
 MM. Thouret, Salles, Mounier, Buzot, Lally, 
 Desmetjniers, Guilhermy, Malhouet, Tar- 
 get, and de Latour Maubourg, 
 
 Marquis de Lafayette, Commander-in-Chief of the National 
 Guard, 
 
 Marquis de Chateauneuf, 
 
 Francois de Neufchateau, 
 
 Camus, the Recorder, 
 
 MM. Cochon, Grandpre, Rouyer 
 Lequinio, and Quinette, 
 
 of the 
 National 
 Assembly. 
 
 members of the National 
 Convention. 
 
206 
 
 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 
 of the Dumouriez 
 Ministry. 
 
 Baron de Necker, Prime Minister, 1789-90. 
 
 Chevalier de Grave, ) 
 
 M. Cahier de Gerville, j of the Kin S' s Council in lm - 
 
 General Dumouriez, Secretary of Foreign Affairs m 1792. 
 
 M. Lacoste, Minister of the Navy, 
 
 M. Clavieres, Minister of Finance, 
 
 M. Duranthon, Minister of Justice, 
 
 M. Servan, Secretary of War (Chev- 
 alier de Grave's successor), 
 
 M. Chambonnas, Secretary of Foreign Affairs, succeeding Gen- 
 eral Dumouriez. 
 
 M. Lajard, Secretary of War, his colleague. 
 
 M. Monge, Minister of the Navy under the Republic. 
 
 M. de Noailles, French Ambassador at Vienna. 
 
 M. de Segur, Ambassador at Berlin. 
 
 Marechal de Rochambeau, *\ 
 
 Generals Luckner, Kellerman, Beaurepaire, | officers of 
 Custine, Beurnonville, and Chazot, 
 
 Lieutenant-Colonel Bertois, 
 
 Theobald Dillon, 
 
 MM. de Biron and de Watteville, 
 
 Mathay, keeper of the Temple Tower. 
 
 Turgy, an attendant of the Princesses at the Temple. 
 
 Tison, ) . . • . 
 
 Madame Tison, j municl P al s P ies at ^ Temple. 
 
 Citizens Gobeau, Danjou, Jacques ^| ... 
 
 Roux, Tcklot, and Meunieb, [ mu ™ipal ^\ on 
 
 James, a teacher of English, J *"iy at the Temple. 
 
 Rocher, a janitor at the Temple. 
 
 MM. Malesherbes, Tronchet, and Deseze, advocates defend- 
 ing the King. 
 
 M. Garat, Minister of Justice, 
 
 M. Lebrun, Minister of Foreign 
 Affairs, 
 
 M. Grovelle, Secretary of the 
 Council, 
 
 ( the French 
 armies on 
 the fron- 
 tiers. 
 
 i 
 
 members of the Executive 
 
 - Council notifying the King 
 
 of his sentence. 
 
LIST OF CHARACTERS. 207 
 
 Abbe Edgeworth de Firmont, the King's confessor at his 
 execution. 
 
 Citizen Ricave, rector of Saint Madeleine, "j 
 
 Citizens Renard and Damoreau, vicars raa n ^ e ° cia 
 of Saint Madeleine Parish, I re P n " 
 
 Citizens Leblanc and Dubois, Adminis- I 
 
 trators of the Department of Paris, J °' 
 
 Comte Cagliostro, assuming the name of Baron Zannone, a 
 Genoese banker. 
 
 Doctor Honore Gilbert, physician to the King. 
 
 Sebastien Gilbert, his son. 
 
 Jean Baptiste Toussaint de Beausire, an adventurer. 
 
 Nicole Oliva Legay, " a woman resembling the Queen." 
 
 Toussaint, son of Beausire and Nicole. 
 
 Archbishop of Bordeaux, Bishop of Autun. 
 
 The Curates of Saint Paul's and Agenteuil. 
 
 MM. de Romeuf and Gouvin, aides-de-camp to Lafayette. 
 
 Romainvilliers, a commander of the National Guard. 
 
 Matthew Dumas, an aide-de-camp in the National Guard. 
 
 Farmer-General Augeaud. 
 
 Marceau, a member of the City Council. 
 
 Prooureur-Syndic Roederer. 
 
 Charles Louis Sanson, commonly called Monsieur de Paris. 
 
 Citizen Palloy, municipal architect. 
 
 Madame Yillette, Voltaire's adopted daughter. 
 
 Mademoiselle Charlotte de Robespierre, sister of Robes- 
 pierre. 
 
 Madame d'Arazon, Mirabeau's niece. 
 
 Madame du Saillant, Mirabeau's sister. 
 
 Albertine, wife of Marat. 
 
 Madame Danton. 
 
 Lucile Duplessis Laridon, wife of Camille Desmoulins. 
 
 MM. Dumont and Frichot, friends of Mirabeau. 
 
 Cerutti, pronouucing the eulogy at Mirabeau's funeral. 
 
 Doctor Cabanis. 
 
208 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 
 M. Lescuyer, a notary at Avignon. 
 
 Major Prefontaine. 
 
 Jean Baptiste Drouet, son of the post-superintendent at St. 
 
 Menehould. 
 
 Gillaume, ) 
 
 iyj- t assisting Drouet to arrest the King's flight. 
 
 M. Sausse, town solicitor of Varennes. 
 
 Madame Sausse. 
 
 Hannont, commander of the National Guard of Varennes. 
 
 Dietrich, Mayor of Strasburg. 
 
 M. Champagneux, editor of " The Lyons Journal." 
 
 MM. Bosc, Bancal des Issarts, and Lanthenas, friends of 
 
 Monsieur and Madame Roland. 
 M. Sourdat, a lawyer of Troyes, offering to defend the King. 
 Oge, a Saint Domingo negro. 
 Madame Dugazon, a singer. 
 Saint-Prix, an actor. 
 Olympe de Gouges, a dramatic writer. 
 Caron de Beaumarchais, author of " Figaro." 
 Pleur d'^pine, a recruiting officer. 
 Father Bemy, a military pensioner. 
 Pelline, Mirabeau's secretary. 
 Teisch and Jean, Mirabeau's servants. 
 Fritz, Count Cagliostro's servant. 
 Mallet, a wine dealer. 
 Duplay, a joiner. 
 Madame Duplay, his wife. 
 Mademoiselle Duplay. 
 Baptiste, servant of Comte de Charny. 
 Leclerc, an amorer. 
 Master Guidon, a carpenter. 
 Brisack, servant of M. de Choiseul. 
 Hucher and Francois, bakers. 
 Buseby, a wig-maker. 
 Lajariette, a barber. 
 
LIST OF CHARACTERS. 209 
 
 The Register of the Court or the Chatelet. 
 
 Louis, a turnkey at the Chatelet prison. 
 
 Frederick William, King of Prussia. 
 
 The Duke of Brunswick. 
 
 Countess Lichtenau. 
 
 Comte Clereayt, an Austrian General. 
 
 William Pitt, the Younger. 
 
 RESIDENTS OF VILLERS COTTERETS. 
 
 Billot, a farmer, afterwards a Deputy to the Legislative 
 
 Assembly, condemning the King. 
 Catherine, his daughter. 
 
 Isidore, son of Catherine and Vicomte de Charny. 
 Madame Billot. 
 
 M. de Longpre, Mayor of Villers Cotteret. 
 Abbe Fortier. 
 
 Mademoiselle Adelaide, his niece. 
 Ange Pitou, Captain of the National Guard of Haramont. 
 Desire Maniquet, Pitou's lieutenant. 
 Claude Tellier, Sergeant of the Haramont National Guard. 
 Messieurs Boulanger and Molicar, of Pitou's troops. 
 Doctor Raynal. 
 Madame Clement, a nurse. 
 Father Clouis. 
 Pather Lajeunesse. 
 Master Delauroy, ) 
 Master Bligny, \ tailors " 
 Picard, a locksmith. 
 Mother Colombe, distributor of letters. 
 Mother Pagot. 
 Pagotin, her son. 
 Parolet. 
 Rigolet, a locksmith. 
 
THE 
 
 CHEVALIER DE MAISON-ROUGE, 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 The "Chevalier de Maison-Rouge," though it 
 deals with events subsequent to those covered by 
 the earlier stories of the Marie Antoinette cycle, 
 was written at an earlier date. In it we are intro- 
 duced to a new set of personages, and see no more 
 of the characters whose fortunes furnish the ficti- 
 tious as distinguished from the historical interest of 
 the earlier stories. 
 
 The months which elapsed between the execution 
 of the King and the appearance in the Place de la 
 Revolution of the ill-fated Marie Antoinette were 
 thickly strewn with tragedy, particularly after the 
 final conflict between the Gironde and the Moun- 
 tain, and the decisive victory of the latter, resulting 
 in the undisputed supremacy of the band of men 
 in whom we now see the personification of the Reign 
 of Terror. 
 
 Those portions of the narrative which describe 
 the life of the queen at the Temple, and subse- 
 
212 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 quently in the Conciergerie, are founded strictly 
 upon fact. Of the treatment accorded to the little 
 Dauphin by Simon, who is given much prominence 
 in the story, it need only be said that it falls fai 
 short of the truth as it is to be found in number- 
 less memoirs and documents. There is nothing in 
 all history more touching and heartrending than the 
 fate of this innocent child, who was literally done to 
 death by sheer brutality in less than two years ; 
 nor is there any one of the excesses committed by 
 the extreme revolutionists which has done more to 
 cause posterity to fail to realize the vast benefits 
 which mankind owes to the Eevolution, in the face 
 of the unnamable horrors which were perpetrated 
 in its name. 
 
 The noble answer of Marie Antoinette to the 
 unnatural charges brought against her by Hebert 
 (not Simon) was actually made at her trial. 
 
 There is no direct historical authority for the 
 various attempts herein detailed to effect the escape 
 of the Queen, although rumors of such were circu- 
 lating unceasingly. The titular hero of the book 
 is not an historical personage, nor are Maurice 
 Lindey and Lorin ; but the latter are faithful rep j 
 resentatives of a by no means small class of 
 sincere and devoted republicans who turned aside 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 2 1 3 
 
 with shrinking horror from the atrocities of the 
 Terror. 
 
 The mutual heroism of Maurice and Lorin in the 
 final catastrophe reminds us of the similar conduct 
 of Gaston in the " Eegent's Daughter " when he fails 
 to reach Nantes with the reprieve until the head of 
 one of his comrades had fallen. Nor can one avoid 
 a thought of Sydney Carton laying down his life 
 for Charles Darnay, in Charles Dickens's " Tale of 
 Two Cities," wherein the horrors of the Terror are 
 so vividly pictured. 
 
 One must go far to seek for a more touching and 
 pathetic love-episode than that of Maurice and 
 Genevieve, whose sinning, if sinning it was, was 
 forced upon them by the cold and unscrupulous 
 Dixmer in the pursuit of his one unchangeable 
 idea. 
 
 On the 16th of October, 1793, the daughter of 
 the Caesars lost her life through the instrumen- 
 tality of the machine which we saw Cagliostro 
 exhibit to her in a glass of water at the Chateau 
 de Taverney more than twenty years before. Then 
 she was in the bloom of youth and beauty, a young 
 queen coming to reign over a people who had just 
 begun to realize their wrongs and their power. 
 To-day she is a woman of thirty-eight, prema- 
 
214 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 turely aged, but bearing about her still the noble 
 dignity of her ancient race, and proving anew, as 
 Charles I. had proved, and as her own husband 
 had proved, that the near approach of death 
 brings forth the noblest qualities in those of royal 
 lineage. 
 
 We cannot better end this brief note than by 
 quoting the characteristic but powerful apostrophe 
 of Carlyle in his essay upon the "Diamond 
 Necklace." 
 
 " Beautiful Highborn, thou wert so foully hurled 
 low! For if thy being came to thee out of old 
 Hapsburg dynasties, came it not also (like my own) 
 out of Heaven ? Sunt lachrymce rerum, et mentem 
 mortalia tangunt. Oh, is there a man's heart that 
 thinks without pity of those long months and years 
 of slow-wasting ignominy : of thy birth, soft-cradled 
 in imperial Schonbrunn, the winds of Heaven not 
 to visit thy face too roughly, thy foot to light on 
 softness, thy eye on splendor: and then of thy 
 death, or hundred deaths, to which the guillotine 
 and Fouquier-Tinville's judgment bar was but the 
 merciful end ? Look there, man born of woman ! 
 The bloom of that fair face is wasted, the hair 
 is gray with care : the brightness of those eyes is 
 quenched, their lids hang drooping, the face is 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 215 
 
 stony pale, as of one living in death. Mean weeds, 
 which her own hand has mended, attire the Queen 
 of the World. The death-hurdle, where thou sittest 
 pale, motionless, which only curses environ, has to 
 stop ; a people, drunk with vengeance, will drink it 
 again in full draught, looking at thee there. Far 
 as the eye reaches, a multitudinous sea of maniac 
 heads : the air deaf with their triumph yell ! The 
 living-dead must shudder with yet one other pang : 
 her startled blood yet again suffuses with the hue 
 of agony that pale face which she hides with her 
 hands. There is, then, no heart to say, God pity 
 thee ? think not of these : think of him whom 
 thou worshippest, the Crucified, — who also treading 
 the wine-press alone, fronted sorrow still deeper: 
 and triumphed over it, and made it holy : and built 
 of it a Sanctuary of Sorrow for thee and all the 
 wretched ! Thy path of thorns is nigh ended. 
 One long last look at the Tuileries, where thy step 
 was once so light, — where thy children shall not 
 dwell. The head is on the block : the axe rushes — 
 Dumb lies the World : that wild-yelling World and 
 all its madness is behind thee." 
 
THE 
 
 CHEVALIER DE MAISON-ROUGE. 
 
 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 Period, 1793. 
 
 prisoners at the Temple. 
 
 in an attempt 
 rescue the Queen. 
 
 to 
 
 Marie Antoinette, 
 
 The Dauphin, 
 
 Madame Royale, 
 
 The Princess Elizabeth, 
 
 Chevalier de Maison-Rouge, 
 
 M. DlXMER, 
 
 Genevieve, his wife, 
 
 Sophie Tison, 
 
 Lieutenant Maurice Lindey, a patriot, in love with Genevieve 
 
 Maximilien-Jean Lorin, his friend. 
 
 Santerre, Commandant of the Parisian National Guard. 
 
 Simon, a cobbler. 
 
 President Harmand, of the Revolutionary Tribunal. 
 
 Fouquier-Tinville, the public accuser. 
 
 M. Giraud, the city architect. 
 
 Chauveau Lagarde, counsel for the Queen. 
 
 Jean Paul Marot, 
 
 Robespierre, 
 
 Danton, 
 
 Chenier, 
 
 Hebert, 
 
 Fabre d'^glantine, 
 
 collot d'herbois, 
 
 Robert Lindet, 
 
 Montagnards. 
 
218 LIST OF CHAEACTEES. 
 
 MM. Yergniaud, Peraud, Brissot, Louvet, ) Girondins 
 
 Petion, Yalaze, Lanjuinais, Barbaroux, ) 
 MM. Roland, Servien, Clavieres, > of the Prench Ministry, 
 
 Le Brtjn, and Monge, j August, 1793. 
 
 Generals Dumouriez, Miacrinski, ^ officers commanding the 
 
 Steingel, Neuilly, Yalence, j- Erench armies on the 
 
 Dampierre, and Miranda, J frontiers. 
 
 Henriot, Commandant-General of the National Guard. 
 Citizen Devaux, of the National Guard. 
 Citizens Tonlan, Lepitre, Agricola, | of the Municipal 
 
 and Mercevatjlt, ) Guard. 
 
 Grammont, Adjutant-Major. 
 Tison, employed at the Temple Prison. 
 Madame Tison, his wife. 
 Arthemise, ex-dancer at the opera. 
 Abbe Girard. 
 Dame Jacinthe, his servant. 
 Turgy, an old waiter of Louis XYL, attending the royal family 
 
 at the Temple. 
 Muguet, femme-de-chambre of Dixmer. 
 Madame Plumeau, hostess of an alehouse near the Temple. 
 Agesilaus, servant to Maurice Lindey. 
 Aristide, concierge at Maurice's house. 
 Gracchus, a turnkey at the Conciergerie. 
 Bichard, jailer at the Conciergerie. 
 Madame Bichard, his wife. 
 
 Duchesse, J Gendarmes at the Conciergerie. 
 
 Gilbert, ) 
 
 Sanson, the executioner. 
 
THE COUNT OF MONTE CEISTO. 
 
 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 Period, 1815-1838. 
 
 Edmond Dantes, a Marseilles sailor, mate of the " Pharaon," 
 afterwards Count of Monte Cristo, assuming the names of 
 Lord TTilmore, Abbe Busoni, and Sinbad the Sailor. 
 
 Louis Dantes, his father. 
 
 Mercedes, a Catalan, betrothed to Edmond Dantes. 
 
 Eernand Mondego, her cousin, afterwards Comte de Morcerf. 
 
 Yicomte Albert de Morcerf, his son. 
 
 Danglars, supercargo of the "Pharaon," afterwards Baron 
 Danglars, a Paris banker. 
 
 Baronne Danglars, his wife. 
 
 Mademoiselle Eugenie Danglars, their daughter. 
 
 Louise d'Armilly, her music-teacher and friend. 
 
 M. Morell, owner of the " Pharaon." 
 
 Madame Morell. 
 
 MAXIMILIAN MoKELL, ) ^ ^^ 
 
 Julie Morell, ) 
 
 Emmanuel Herbaut, ) clerks in the house of Morell and 
 Cocles, ) Sons, Marseilles, 
 
 Gaspard Caderousse, a Marseilles tailor, afterwards landlord of 
 
 the Pont du Gard Inn. 
 Madeleine, his wife, otherwise known as La Carconte. 
 The Emperor Napoleon. 
 Louis XVIII. 
 
members of the 
 
 Bonapartist Club 
 
 in the Rue St. 
 
 Jacques. 
 
 220 LIST OF CHARACTERS. 
 
 Baron Dandre, Minister of Police, ) x^ovalists 
 
 Due de Blacas, j 
 
 M. Noirtier de Villefort, an adherent of Napoleon. 
 
 M. Gerard de Villefort, his son, procureur du roi. 
 
 Marquis de Saint-Meran. 
 
 Marquise de Saint-Meran. 
 
 Mademoiselle Renee de Saint-Meran, their daughter, be- 
 trothed to M. Gerard de Villefort. 
 
 Comte de Salvieux, friend of M. de Saint-Meran. 
 
 General Flavien de Quesnel. 
 
 Baron Franz d'J^pinay, his son. 
 
 Lieutenant-Colonel Louis Jacques n 
 Beaurepaire, 
 
 Brigadier-General J^tienne Duchampy, 
 
 Claude Lecharpal, keeper of streams and 
 forests, 
 
 Marechel Bertrand. 
 
 M. de Boville, inspector of prisons. 
 
 The Governor of the Chateau d'If. 
 
 Abbe Faria, a prisoner in the Chateau d'If. 
 
 A Jailor, at the Chateau d'If. 
 
 The Mayor of Marseilles. 
 
 Captain Baldi, of " La Jeune Amelie," a Genoese smuggler. 
 
 Jacopo, one of his crew. 
 
 Maitre Pastrini, proprietor of the Hotel de Londres, Rome. 
 
 Gaetano, a Roman sailor. 
 
 Cucumetto, a brigand chief. 
 
 _ ' c of Cucumetto's troop. 
 
 DlAVOLACCIO, ' 
 
 Rita, betrothed to Carlini. 
 
 Luigi Vamp a, a shepherd boy, afterwards a Captain of Roman 
 
 brigands. 
 Teresa, his betrothed. 
 Peppino, a shepherd. 
 Andrea Rondola, a condemned murderer. 
 
LIST OF CHARACTERS. 221 
 
 Com™ de San Felice ' I Roman noblemen. 
 Due de Bracciano, ) 
 
 Carmela, Comte de San Eelice's daughter. 
 
 COMTESSE GUICCIOLI. 
 
 Major Bartolomeo Cavalcanti, au adventurer. 
 Benedetto, passing under the name of Andrea de Cavalcanti. 
 M. Lucien Debray, private secretary ^ 
 
 friends of Albert de 
 Morcerf. 
 
 to the Minister of the Interior, 
 M. Beau champ, an editor, 
 Comte de Chateau-Renaud, 
 Helo'ise, Villefort's second wife. 
 £douard, her son. 
 Mademoiselle Valentine, Villefort's daughter by his first 
 
 wife, in love with Maximilian Morell. 
 Doctor d'Avrigny, Villefort's physician. 
 M. Deschamps, a notary. 
 Ali Tebelin, Pacha of Janina. 
 Vasiliki, his wife. 
 
 Haydee, daughter of Ali Pacha and Vasiliki. 
 Selim, favorite of Ali Pacha. 
 Bertuccio, steward to the Count of Monte Cristo, 
 Assunta, Bertuccio's sister-in-law. 
 Baptistin, Monte Cristo's valet. 
 Ali, a Nubian mute, slave to Monte Cristo. 
 Abbe Adelmonte, a Sicilian. 
 Germain, Albert de Morcerf s valet. 
 £tienne, valet to Danglars. 
 Barrois, Noirtier's servant. 
 Fanny, Mademoiselle de Villefort's maid. 
 Pere Pamphile, of La Reserve Inn. 
 Captain Leclerc, \ 
 
 Penelon, a sailor, V in the service of M. Morell. 
 Captain Gaumard, J 
 Joannes, a jeweller. 
 
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