the historian! The captain
of gendarmerie, who remitted the report of the proceedings in the prison
to the Justice of the Peace, at which he was present, was Nodier's
uncle. This report handed to the Justice of the Peace was the story
which, graven upon the young man's mind, saw the light some forty
years later unaltered, in that masterpiece entitled "Souvenirs de la
Revolution." The entire series of papers was in the record office. M.
Martin offered to have them copied for me; inquiry, trial and judgment.

I had a copy of Nodier's "Souvenirs of the Revolution" in my pocket.
In my hand I held the report of the execution which confirmed the facts
therein stated.

"Now let us go to our magistrate," I said to M. Milliet.

"Let us go to our magistrate," he repeated.

The magistrate was confounded, and I left him convinced that poets know
history as well as historians--if not better.

ALEX. DUMAS.

PROLOGUE. THE CITY OF AVIGNON

We do not know if the prologue we are going to present to our readers'
eyes be very useful, nevertheless we cannot resist the desire to make of
it, not the first chapter, but the preface of this book.

The more we advance in life, the more we advance in art, the more
convinced we become that nothing is abrupt and isolated; that nature
and society progress by evolution and not by chance, and that the event,
flower joyous or sad, perfumed or fetid, beneficent or fatal, which
unfolds itself to-day before our eyes, was sown in the past, and had
its roots sometimes in days anterior to ours, even as it will bear its
fruits in the future.

Young, man accepts life as it comes, enamored of yestereen, careless
of the day, heeding little the morrow. Youth is the springtide with its
dewy dawns and its beautiful nights; if sometimes a storm clouds the
sky, it gathers, mutters and disperses, leaving the sky bluer, the
atmosphere purer, and Nature more smiling than before. What use is there
in reflecting on this storm that passes swift as a caprice, ephemeral
as a fancy? Before we have discovered the secret of the meteorological
enigma, the storm will have disappeared.

But it is not thus with the terrible phenomena, which at the close of
summer, threaten our harvests; or in the midst of autumn, assail our
vintages; we ask whither they go, we query whence they come, we seek a
means to prevent them.

To the thinker, the historian, the poet, there is a far deeper subject
for reflection in revolut