Project Gutenberg's The Historical Nights' Entertainment, by Rafael Sabatini

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Title: The Historical Nights' Entertainment

Author: Rafael Sabatini

Posting Date: December 22, 2008 [EBook #2636]
Release Date: May, 2001

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE HISTORICAL NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT

First Series

By Rafael Sabatini

PREFACE

In approaching "The Historical Nights' Entertainment" I set myself the
task of reconstructing, in the fullest possible detail and with all the
colour available from surviving records, a group of more or less famous
events. I would select for my purpose those which were in themselves
bizarre and resulting from the interplay of human passions, and whilst
relating each of these events in the form of a story, I would compel
that story scrupulously to follow the actual, recorded facts without
owing anything to fiction, and I would draw upon my imagination, if at
all, merely as one might employ colour to fill in the outlines which
history leaves grey, taking care that my colour should be as true to
nature as possible. For dialogue I would depend upon such scraps
of actual speech as were chronicled in each case, amplifying it by
translating into terms of speech the paraphrases of contemporary
chroniclers.

Such was the task I set myself. I am aware that it has been attempted
once or twice already, beginning, perhaps, with the "Crimes Celebres"
of Alexandre Dumas. I am not aware that the attempt has ever succeeded.
This is not to say that I claim success in the essays that follow. How
nearly I may have approached success--judged by the standard I had set
myself--how far I may have fallen short, my readers will discern. I
am conscious, however, of having in the main dutifully resisted the
temptation to take the easier road, to break away from restricting fact
for the sake of achieving a more intriguing narrative. In one instance,
however, I have quite deliberately failed, and in some others I have
permitted myself certain speculations to resolve mysteries of which no
explanatio