A fairy tale!--historical novels are all fairy tales, or approximate to fairy tales, for the same reason, perhaps, that all the fairies, Puck, Oberon and the rest of them, were once people in history. Under all the complexity and confusion of man's mental life there lies the invincible demand for the simple and the absolute in his view of the past as of the universe. The scholar and the scientific historian seek to build up stone by stone, from the dust-heap of the ages, the intricate web of the past; but the historical novelist, closer to the imagination of the race, seeks rather to reproduce the past in its broad outlines, in its ideal aspects of sharply defined and sharply opposing forces. We hear much to-day of the death of the historical novel as a form of art. And this is because at its best to-day it has seemed a clever reconstruction of the past, a _pastiche_, as the French call it, a work of erudition, rather than an appropriation of the past for the purpose of effecting a romantic release from the uncompromising and prosaic conditions of the present. It is no wonder that the old romantic form of Scott and Dumas, being reduced to so lifeless a formula, should occasionally appear moribund. But it should be remembered that what proceeds from the mind, and is part of it, can always be renewed from the mind, and that forms in art are constantly being revitalized by some fresh creative impulse. And so often as there shall appear a writer like Miss Bowen capable of properly appraising the past, not as a shop stuffed with strange articles of attire and antiquities, but as a splendid stage set for the performance of a moving human drama, just so often will the historical novel renew its attraction over the minds of all men in new creations. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. GIAN GALEAZZO MARIA VISCONTI 3 II. "FRANCISCO" 15 III. THE HOSTAGE OF THE ESTES 25 IV. VALENTINE 35 V. THE PAINTER'S DAUGHTER 39 VI. THE RESCUE OF COUNT VON SCHULEMBOURG 51 VII. "GRAZIOSA'S BRACELET" 58 VIII. FOR A LADY'S GIFT 75 IX. THE RETURN OF THE DEAD 88 X. THE TURQUOISE GLOVES 99 XI. MASTINO DELLA SCALA 111 XII. GRAZIOSA'S LOVER 120 XIII. VALENTINE VISCONTI'S TOAST 133 XIV. THE TUMULT AT THE WESTERN GATE 144 XV. A PRISONER FROM MILAN 157 XVI. FOR A GAME OF CHESS 165 XVII. THE TERRORS OF THE NIGHT 172 XVIII. GIACOMO CARRARA'S REWARD 184 XIX. A SIGN FROM HEAVEN 190 XX. IN THE DUKE'S ABSENCE 199 XXI. THE DUKE'S RETURN 214