"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 explanation has been discovered. Of these it
is necessary that I should make a full confession.

My deliberate failure is "The Night of Nuptials." I discovered an
allusion to the case of Charles the Bold and Sapphira Danvelt in
Macaulay's "History of England" - quoted from an old number of the
"Spectator" - whilst I was working upon the case of Lady Alice Lisle.
There a similar episode is mentioned as being related of Colonel
Kirke, but discredited because known for a story that has a trick
of springing up to attach itself to unscrupulous captains. I set
out to track it to its source, and having found its first appearance
to be in connection with Charles the Bold's German captain Rhynsault,
I attempted to reconstruct the event as it might have happened,
setting it at least in surroundings of solid fact.

My most flagrant speculation occurs in "The Night of Hate." But in
defence of it I can honestly say that it is at least no more flagrant
than the speculations on this subject that have become enshrined in
history as facts. In other words, I claim for my reconstruction of
the circumstances attending the mysterious death of Giovanni Borgia,