BOOK 1.


LETTER I.

Introduction.--Anecdotes of Marguerite's Infancy.--Endeavours Used to
Convert Her to the New Religion.--She Is Confirmed in Catholicism.--The
Court on a Progress.--A Grand Festivity Suddenly Interrupted.--The
Confusion in Consequence.


I should commend your work much more were I myself less praised in it;
but I am unwilling to do so, lest my praises should seem rather the
effect of self-love than to be founded on reason and justice. I am
fearful that, like Themistocles, I should appear to admire their
eloquence the most who are most forward to praise me. It is the usual
frailty of our sex to be fond of flattery. I blame this in other women,
and should wish not to be chargeable with it myself. Yet I confess that
I take a pride in being painted by the hand of so able a master, however
flattering the likeness may be. If I ever were possessed of the graces
you have assigned to me, trouble and vexation render them no longer
visible, and have even effaced them from my own recollection. So that I
view myself in your Memoirs, and say, with old Madame de Rendan, who, not
having consulted her glass since her husband's death, on seeing her own
face in the mirror of another lady, exclaimed, "Who is this?" Whatever
my friends tell me when they see me now, I am inclined to think proceeds