The Sydney Library Edition THE ROMANCES OF ALEXANDRE DUMAS ASCANIO PARTS I. AND II. Volume XI. [Illustration 01] [Illustration 02] THE ROMANCES OF ALEXANDRE DUMAS Volume XI. ASCANIO _PART FIRST_ NEW YORK GEORGE D. SPROUL Publisher 1898 _Copyright, 1896_, By Little, Brown, and Company. University Press: John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. INTRODUCTORY NOTE "Never perhaps," says Miss Pardoe (in the Preface to the "Court and Reign of Francis I."), "did the reign of any European sovereign present so many and such varying phases. A contest for empire, a captive monarch, a female regency, and a religious war; the poisoned bowl and the burning pile alike doing their work of death amid scenes of uncalculating splendor and unbridled dissipation; the atrocities of bigotry and intolerance, blent with the most unblushing licentiousness and the most undisguised profligacy;--such are the materials offered to the student by the times of Francis I." The period thus characterized is that in which the scene of the present romance is laid, and although the plot is mainly concerned with the fortunes of others than subjects of the _Roi Chevalier_, we are treated to a succession of vivid pictures of life and manners at the French court and in the French capital. The author depicts the king rather as he appeared to the world before what has been called the "legend of the Roi Chevalier,"--that is to say, the long prevailing idea that François I. was the most chivalrous monarch who ever sat upon a European throne,--had been modified by the independent researches of those who have not feared to go behind the writings of the old and well tutored chroniclers whose works have formed the basis of most modern histories,--chroniclers who seem to have been guided by Cardinal Richelieu's famous remark to an aspiring historian, apropos of certain animadversions upon the character of Louis XI., that "it is treason to discuss the actions of a king who has been dead only two centuries." The result of these researches is thus summed up by Miss Pardoe in the same Preface:--