STRAY PEARLS

MEMOIRS OF MARGARET DE RIBAUMONT

VISCOUNTESS OF BELLAISE





PREFACE



No one can be more aware than the author that the construction of
this tale is defective. The state of French society, and the strange
scenes of the Fronde, beguiled me into a tale which has become rather
a family record than a novel.

Formerly the Muse of the historical romance was an independent and
arbitrary personage, who could compress time, resuscitate the dead,
give mighty deeds to imaginary heroes, exchange substitutes for
popular martyrs on the scaffold, and make the most stubborn facts
subservient to her purpose. Indeed, her most favoured son boldly
asserted her right to bend time and place to her purpose, and to make
the interest and effectiveness of her work the paramount object. But
critics have lashed her out of these erratic ways, and she is now
become the meek hand maid of Clio, creeping obediently in the track
of the greater Muse, and never venturing on more than colouring and
working up the grand outlines that her mistress has left undefined.