ANTOINE DE BONNEVAL: A Story of the Fronde. 10144 "Call it a moment's work (and such it seems), COLERIDGE. LONDON: BURNS AND LAMBERT, 17 PORTMAN STREET. BACHEM, COLOGNE; CASTERMAN, PARIS AND TOURNAI. "If in time, as in place, there were degrees of high and low, I verily believe that the highest of time would be that which passed between 1640 and 1660; for he that thence, as from the devil's mountain, should have looked upon the world, and observed the actions of men, might have had a prospect of all kinds of injustice, and all kinds of folly, that the world could afford." HOBBES, Behemoth. "Malheur aux rois, s'ils ne s'acquittent pas de leurs devoirs envers nous; mais malheur à nous, si nous manquons aux nôtres, et jamais l'incertitude du droit primordial ne justifiera raisonnablement quiconque sera assez criminel pour s'en éloigner." Mémoires historiques de Boulainvilliers. ADVERTISEMENT. THE name given to the hero in the following pages was chosen by fancy, though not without permission from the distinguished family to which it actually belongs. It may be well, however, to state, that a considerable portion of the volume was in type, and so fixed beyond recall, before the appearance of the graceful story entitled La Comtesse de Bonneval, which has been lately republished in a separate form from the pages of the Correspondant. PROLOGUE OR EPILOGUE, AS THE CASE MAY BE. Deem of it what thou wilt; but pardon me, Reader. Well, but you don't expect this sort of thing to go down? Author. What sort of thing? Reader. Why, the kind of crude and shapeless concrete of chapters which you have chosen to call a story, and thrown into the press. Author. Nay, courteous reader, I have only called it an incident. And an incident, be pleased to observe, in one of the most freakish, desultory periods that are to be found in the history of any country or time: when men of station, and some of them men of talent, owned no principle but their own wayward fancies. Reader. Not forgetting the fancies of those yet more freakish ladies, whose humours had such an influence upon the affairs of state. Author. Till, as I was going to say, they became dangerous, chiefly by perseverance in being wrong-headed. So that an incident in the Fronde may well be pardoned for being somewhat dithyrambic. Reader. Even thus, you might have made more out of your materials, and produced a book. Author. By going deeper? or by treating matters more popularly? Reader. Either way, by being more interesting. Author. Interest is a relative term. among us engrossed in their own departments of study, who may yet feel it worth while, as a by-play, to occupy |