At the time when he so kindly entrusted to me the letters above named,
the same obliging friend also confided to my care, with full permission
to make whatever use of it I should see fit, an unpublished MS.
consisting of nearly twelve thousand pages closely written, and divided
into twenty-four volumes small quarto, all undeniably the work of one
hand. This elaborate MS. was entitled "Memoirs of M. le Commandeur de
Rambure, Captain of the regiment of French Guards, Gentleman of the
Bedchamber under the Kings Henri IV, Louis XIII, and Louis XIV surnamed
the Great, with all the most memorable events which took place during
the reigns of those three Majesties, from the year 1594 to that
of 1660."

The author of this voluminous MS., who, at the age of eighty-one,
inscribes his work to his _uncle_, Monseigneur de Rambure, Bishop of
Vannes, and who professes to have ventured thus tardily upon his
Herculean undertaking at the request, and for the instruction, of his
nephew the Marquis de Rambure, lays strict injunctions upon his
successors to keep the record of his life to themselves; alleging as his
reason a dread of injuring by his revelations the interests of the young
courtier, who had succeeded to his own post of Gentleman of the
Bedchamber; "and that," as he proceeds to say, "to the greatest King in
the world, by whom he has the honour to be loved and esteemed; therefore
I pray you that this writing may never be printed, in order not to make
him enemies, who are too ready to come without being sought by our
imprudence; and because I have only composed these Memoirs for myself
and my kindred." [1]

The author states that the work is not in his own handwriting, but in
that of his secretary, to whom he dictated during eleven years four
hours each day, two in the morning, and two in the afternoon--and that
he commenced his formidable task in the year 1664, when he was living in
retirement in his Commanderie of St. Eugene in Limousin; and, despite
his advanced age, "in possession of all his faculties as perfectly as
when he had only reached his twenty-fifth year."

It is but recently that the present proprietor of the Memoirs, rightly
judging that the time has elapsed in which the disclosures of the
chronicler in question could conduce to the injury of any one connected
with him, has consented to permit of their perusal; and that only by a
few literary friends, all of whom have been astonished by their
extraordinary variet