I do not plead for pardon in treating an all-but-hallowed theme in a rather high-handed fashion, since every grain here has been painfully sifted and weighed, and the material, if not the proportioning of it, is true as truth. But in so treating it, I bore in mind that excision is the best safeguard against decay, that time throws away as rag and bobtail the political specifications thought to be precious, and that we must at once, and in the nobler sense, romanticize such dry facts as we mean shall live. It is always the character of the man which vitalizes the event; what did or did not happen is, ultimately, of minor importance beside the spectacle of a strong soul. A background may be blurred for the sake of a single figure. I tried, therefore, to paint a portrait, willing to abide by the hard saying of Northcote: “If a portrait have force, it will do for history.” To the Rev. Walter Elliott, editor of _The Catholic World_, who allows me thus to incorporate and remodel a sketch first contributed to its pages; to Monsieur le Curé and Monsieur le Vicaire of Saint-Aubin-de-Baubigné, who, for the sake of the immortal Red Handkerchief unknown to English literature, brightened my frosty travels in the old Bocage; to Madame la Comtesse de Chabot of Boissière; to Mademoiselle de Chabot, Henri’s young kinswoman and annalist, whose ardent researches have verified many of the data I give, and to Monsieur de Chabot, also, who drew for his sister’s soldierly book the admirable chart now kindly lent me for transmarine use, I return, this late, my faithful and ever affectionate thanks. L. I. G. LONDON, 1891. “MONSIEUR HENRI”: A FOOT-NOTE TO FRENCH HISTORY. Before a crowd of excited farmers, a young Frenchman, blond, enthusiastic, delicately-nurtured, made once this singular oration: “Friends! if my father were here, you would have confidence. As for me, I am only a boy, but I will prove that I deserve to lead you. When I advance, do you follow me; when I flinch, cut me down; when I fall, avenge me!” Then amid the cheers and tears of peasants, he sat in the great court-yard of his father’s abandoned house, and munched with them their coarse brown loaves. It was the first slight sign of his consecration to a cause. He had spoken famous words, hardly to be matched in history; words which have travelled far and wide, and proclaimed his spirit where his name is utterly unknown. Yesterday he was a carpet-knight; now, like “gallant Murray” in the song, “His gude sword he hath drawn it, And hath flung the sheath awa’.” There was no retrogression. Henri du Vergier de La Rochejaquelein, twenty years old, a little indolent hitherto, an athlete, a critic of horses and hounds, was suddenly shaken out of his velvet privacy into the rude lap of the Revolution.