CHAPTER XL. THE SANDS OF OLONNE

CHAPTER XLI. OUR LADY OF HOPE

CHAPTER XLII. THE SILVER BULLET

CHAPTER XLIII. LA BAISER D'EUSTACIE

CHAPTER XLIV. THE GALIMAFRE






PREFACE



It is the fashion to call every story controversial that deals with
times when controversy or a war of religion was raging; but it
should be remembered that there are some which only attempt to
portray human feelings as affected by the events that such warfare
occasioned. 'Old Mortality' and 'Woodstock' are not controversial
tales, and the 'Chaplet of Pearls' is so quite as little. It only
aims at drawing certain scenes and certain characters as the
convulsions of the sixteenth century may have affected them, and
is, in fact, like all historical romance, the shaping of the
conceptions that the imagination must necessarily form when
dwelling upon the records of history. That faculty which might be