My dear Mr. Colburn, where was I? I quite forget--Oh, now I have it! Having one day possessed myself of a bundle of manuscript notes,--honestly come by,--I proceeded to read them, and although the hand was small and crooked, with all the _k_'s shaped like Laocoons, and every _g_ like a pair of spectacles, yet there was something in the tale there written, that made me read it through before I rose off my chair, although I did not then know, what I have since discovered, that every word of it was true. Now this is an advantage which you, my dear reader, have over me in perusing this history for the first time; for unquestionably even upon my pure _ipse dixit_, you will believe that the whole of the three volumes which follow, is neither more nor less than a plain and simple narration of facts. Nevertheless, in case there should be in the world any person so sceptical as to doubt the assertion, even of a novelist, I will refer my reader to the well-known authorities of the day, and merely observe, that though there may be some discrepancy in the dates and some difference in the names, yet every individual circumstance recorded in these pages, will be found to be collaterally verified by contemporary writers of good repute, who, however, did not know so much of the detail of the events in question as are disclosed in the old manuscript alluded to, nor were they, like the writer of that document, acquainted with the real causes of those movements which shook the whole of France, and which, originating in the heart of the Court, could only be detected by one who was himself a resident there. To you, my dear reader, whose confidence in my word I know to be as unbounded as the conscience of a tailor, or the stomach of an alderman, I have only to remark, that the Hero of my tale is by no means a fabulous person. My story opens with the latter years of the reign of Louis XIII. King of France--a period memorable in English annals from the civil wars which then raged between Charles I. and his rebellious Parliament, and no less memorable in the history of France, as the most terrific portion of Richelieu's bloody domination. At the death of Henry IV. the Regency of the kingdom during her son's minority, was seized upon by Mary de Medicis, a woman of considerable talent and of vast ambition, whose primary object seems to have been, so to secure the sovereign power to herself, that Louis during her life should remain in a state of tutelage.