QUO VADIS

A Narrative of the Time of Nero

by Henryk Sienkiewicz


Translated from the Polish by Jeremiah Curtin


TO AUGUSTE COMTE,

Of San Francisco, Cal.,

MY DEAR FRIEND AND CLASSMATE, I BEG TO DEDICATE THIS VOLUME.

JEREMIAH CURTIN

INTRODUCTORY

IN the trilogy "With Fire and Sword," "The Deluge," and "Pan Michael,"
Sienkiewicz has given pictures of a great and decisive epoch in modern
history. The results of the struggle begun under Bogdan Hmelnitski have
been felt for more than two centuries, and they are growing daily in
importance. The Russia which rose out of that struggle has become a
power not only of European but of world-wide significance, and, to all
human seeming, she is yet in an early stage of her career.

In "Quo Vadis" the author gives us pictures of opening scenes in the
conflict of moral ideas with the Roman Empire,--a conflict from which