Transcriber's note: There are numerous examples throughout this text
of words appearing in alternate spellings: madame/madam, practise/
practice, Ladyship/ladyship, &c. We can only wonder what the publisher
had in mind. I have left them unchanged.--D.L.






LOVE AND LIFE


An Old Story in Eighteenth Century Costume

By CHARLOTTE M. YONGE




PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.


The first edition of this tale was put forth without explaining the
old fable on which it was founded--a fable recurring again and again
in fairy myths, though not traceable in the classic world till a very
late period, when it appeared among the tales of Apuleius, of the
province of Africa, sometimes called the earliest novelist. There
are, however, fragments of the same story in the popular tales of all
countries, so that it is probable that Apuleius availed himself of an