past for figures that will stir the heart like these, even though
the details be as incorrect as those of the revolt of Liege or of
La Ferrette in 'Quentin Durward' and 'Anne of Geierstein.'

Scott, however, willfully carved history to suit the purposes of
his story; and in these days we have come to feel that a story must
earn a certain amount of credibility by being in keeping with
established facts, even if striking events have to be sacrificed,
and that the order of time must be preserved. In Shakespeare's
days, or even in Scott's, it might have been possible to bring
Henry III. and his _mignons_ to due punishment within the limits of
a tale beginning with the Massacre of St. Bartholomew; but in 1868
the broad outlines of tragedy must be given up to keep within the
bounds of historical verity.

How far this has been done, critics better read than myself must
decide. I have endeavoured to speak fairly, to the best of my
ability, of such classes of persons as fell in with the course of
the narrative, according to such lights as the memoirs of the time
afford. The Convent is scarcely a CLASS portrait, but the
condition of it seems to be justified by hints in the Port Royal
memoirs, respecting Maubuisson and others which Mere Angelique
reformed. The intolerance of the ladies at Montauban is described
in Madame Duplessis-Mornay's life; and if Berenger's education and
opinions are looked on as not sufficiently alien from Roman
Catholicism, a reference to Froude's 'History of Queen Elizabeth'
will show both that the customs of the country clergy, and likewise
that a broad distinction was made by the better informed among the
French between Calvinism and Protestantism or Lutheranism, in which
they included Anglicanism. The minister Gardon I do not consider