Of all the books which I have written, perhaps because it cost me so
much, because it demanded so much of me at the time of its writing, I
care for it the most. It was as good work as I could do. This much may
at least be said: that no one has done anything quite in the same way or
used the same subject, or given it the same treatment. Also it may be
said, as the Saturday Review remarked, that it contained one whole, new
idea, and that was the pathetic--unutterably pathetic--incident of a man
driven by the truth in his blood to impersonate himself.




"Oh, withered is the garland of the war,
The Soldier's pole is fallen."




WHEN VALMOND CAME TO PONTIAC


CHAPTER I

On one corner stood the house of Monsieur Garon the avocat; on another,
the shop of the Little Chemist; on another, the office of Medallion the
auctioneer; and on the last, the Hotel Louis Quinze. The chief
characteristics of Monsieur Garon's house were its brass door-knobs,
and the verdant vines that climbed its sides; of the Little Chemist's
shop, the perfect whiteness of the building, the rolls of sober wall-