As my story lays no claim to classicism, either in style or structure, this foreword may as well be made to play the part of a preface. My acquaintances will, doubtless, open their eyes on seeing me thus enter, at the age of seventy-six, on the perilous paths of authorship. Possibly I owe them an explanation. Although tired of reading all these years with so little profit either to myself or others, I yet dreaded to pass the Rubicon. A matter small enough in itself in the end decided me. One of my friends, a man of parts, whom I met last year in St Louis Street, in our good city of Quebec, grasped me warmly by the hand and exclaimed: "Awfully glad to see you! Do you know, my dear fellow, I have talked this morning with no fewer than eleven people, not one of them with half an idea in his noddle!" And he wrung my arm almost out of joint. "Really," said I, "you are very complimentary; for I perceive by the warmth of your greeting that I am the exception, the man you--" "Oh, yes, indeed," he cried, without letting me finish my sentence, "those are the only sensible words I have heard this morning." And he crossed the street to speak to some one, probably his addle-pate number twelve, who was seeking to attract his attention. "The devil!" thought I to myself, "if what I just said is in any way brilliant, it would seem easy enough to shine. Though I have never yet been suspected of it, I must be rather a clever fellow." Much elated with this discovery, and congratulating myself that I had more brains than the unhappy eleven of whom my friend had spoken, I hurry to my library, I furnish myself, perhaps all too appropriately, with a ream of the paper called "foolscap," and I set myself to work. I write for my own amusement, at the risk of wearying the reader who may have the patience to go through this volume. But, as Nature has made me compassionate, I will give this dear reader a little good advice. He had better throw away the unlucky book without taking the trouble to criticise it, which would be making it much too important, and would be, moreover, but wasted labor for the serious critic; for, unlike that old Archbishop of Granada, so touchy on the subject of his sermons, of whom Gil Blas has told us, I am, for my part, blessed with an easy humor, and, instead of retorting to my critic, "I wish you good luck and very much better taste," I will frankly admit that my book has a thousand faults, of most of which I have a lively consciousness.