f, sells pens made of fish-bone by the Abbe Faria himself.

There is but one unfortunate circumstance concerning this; the fact is,
Dantes and the Abbe Faria have never existed save in my imagination;
consequently, Dantes could not have been precipitated from the top to
the bottom of the Chateau d'If, nor could the Abbe Faria have made pens.
But that is what comes from visiting these localities in person.

Therefore, I wished to visit Varennes before commencing my novel,
because the first chapter was to open in that city. Besides,
historically, Varennes worried me considerably; the more I perused the
historical accounts of Varennes, the less I was able to understand,
topographically, the king's arrest.

I therefore proposed to my young friend, Paul Bocage, that he accompany
me to Varennes. I was sure in advance that he would accept. To merely
propose such a trip to his picturesque and charming mind was to make him
bound from his chair to the tram. We took the railroad to Chalons.
There we bargained with a livery-stable keeper, who agreed, for a
consideration of ten francs a day, to furnish us with a horse and
carriage. We were seven days on the trip, three days to go from Chalons
to Varennes, one day to make the requisite local researches in the city,
and three days to return from Varennes to Chalons.

I recognized with a degree of satisfaction which you will easily
comprehend, that not a single historian had been historical, and with
still greater satisfaction that M. Thiers had been the least accurate of
all these historians. I had already suspected this, but was not certain.
The only one who had been accurate, with absolute accuracy, was Victor
Hugo in his book called "The Rhine." It is true that Victor Hugo is a
poet and not a historian. What historians these poets would make, if
they would but consent to become historians!

One day Lamartine asked me to what I attributed the immense success of
his "Histoire des Girondins."

"To this, because in it you rose to the level of a novel," I answered
him. He reflected for a while and ended, I believe, by agreeing with me.

I spent a day, therefore, at Varennes and visited all the localities
necessary for my novel, which was to be called "Rene d'Argonne." Then
I returned. My son was staying in the country at Sainte-Assise, near
Melun; my room awaited me, and I resolved to go there to write my novel.

I am acquainted with no two characters more dissimilar than Alexand