That you, to whom I inscribe this work, can appreciate such purposes, and will encourage the attempt, even where, as in these pages, it goes little beyond endeavour, is no slight pleasure to me: nor is it an unmeaning or insincere compliment when I say, that though I yield my own opinions to no man, yet I have often thought of you and yours while I have been writing these volumes. I know not whether you remember saying one day, after we had visited together the school instituted by our noble acquaintance Guicciardini, "that whether it succeeded or failed, the endeavour to do good ought to immortalize him." Perhaps you have forgotten the words, but I have not. Allow me, ere I end this long epistle, to add something in regard to the truth of the representations made in the work, and the foundation on which the story rests. If you will look into the curious "Mémoires Historiques sur la Bastille," published in 1789 (vol. i., page 203), you will find some of the bare facts, as they are stated in the Great Register of the Bastille, on which the plot of the tale that follows entirely hinges. Of course I cannot forestall my story by alluding more particularly to those facts; and I have only further to say on that subject, that for many reasons I have altered the names inserted in the Great Register. I have also taken the same liberty with regard to the scenes of many events which really occurred, placing in Poitou what sometimes took place in Dauphiny, sometimes in Provence. Nor have I felt myself bound in all instances to respect the exact dates, having judged it expedient to bring many events within a short compass which were spread over a greater space of time. I have endeavoured, however, to represent most accurately, without prejudice or favour, the conduct of the French Catholics to French Protestants, and of Protestants to Catholics, during the persecutions of the seventeenth century. My love and esteem for many excellent Catholics--priests as well as laity--would prevent me, I believe, from viewing the question of the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and the consequences thereof, with a prejudiced eye; and when I read the following passages in the writings, not of a Protestant, but of a sincere Catholic, I am only inclined to doubt whether I have not softened the picture of persecution. "Il restait peu à faire pour exciter le zèle du roi contre une religion solemnellement frappée des plus éclatans anathèmes par l'église universelle, et qui s'en était elle-même frappée la première en se séparant de tout l'antiquité sur des points de foi fondamentaux.