Francois Villon! Think of that, ye fond British bards and bardlets of to-day--ye would-be translators and imitators of that never-to-be-translated, never-to-be-imitated lament, the immortal _Ballade des Dames du Temps jadis_! And while I speak of it, I may as well mention that we have seen them too, or some of them--those fair ladies _he_ had never seen, and who had already melted away before his coming, like the snows of yester year, _les neiges d'antan!_ Bertha, with the big feet; Joan of Arc, the good Lorrainer (what would she think of her native province now!); the very learned Heloise, for love of whom one Peter Esbaillart, or Abelard (a more luckless Peter than even I!), suffered such cruel indignities at monkish hands; and that haughty, naughty queen, in her Tower of Nesle, _"Qui commanda que Buridan Fut jecte en ung Sac en Seine...."_ Yes, we have seen them with the eye, and heard them speak and sing, and scold and jest, and laugh and weep, and even pray! And I have sketched them, as you shall see some day, good reader! And let me tell you that their beauty was by no means maddening: the standard of female loveliness has gone up, even in France! Even _la tres sage Helois_ was scarcely worth such a sacrifice as--but there! Possess your soul in patience; all that, and it is all but endless, will appear in due time, with such descriptions and illustrations as I flatter myself the world has never bargained for, and will value as it has never valued any historical records yet! Day after day, for more than twenty years, Mary has kept a voluminous diary (in a cipher known to us both); it is now my property, and in it every detail of our long journey into the past has been set down. Contemporaneously, day by day (during the leisure accorded to me by the kindness of Governor----) I have drawn over again from memory the sketches of people and places I was able to make straight from nature during those wonderful nights at "Magna sed Apta." I can guarantee the correctness of them, and the fidelity of their likenesses; no doubt their execution leaves much to be desired. Both her task and mine (to the future publication of which this autobiography is but an introduction) have been performed with the minutest care and conscientiousness; no time or trouble have been spared. For instance, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew alone, which we were able to study from seventeen different points of view, cost us no less than two months' unremitting labor.