In my hand I held the report of the execution which confirmed the
facts therein stated.

"Now let us go to our magistrate," I said to M. Milliet.

"Let us go to our magistrate," he repeated.

The magistrate was confounded, and I left him convinced that poets
know history as well as historians--if not better.

ALEX. DUMAS.




PROLOGUE

THE CITY OF AVIGNON

We do not know if the prologue we are going to present to our
readers' eyes be very useful, nevertheless we cannot resist the
desire to make of it, not the first chapter, but the preface
of this book.

The more we advance in life, the more we advance in art, the
more convinced we become that nothing is abrupt and isolated;
that nature and society progress by evolution and not by chance,
and that the event, flower joyous or sad, perfumed or fetid,
beneficent or fatal, which unfolds itself to-day before our eyes,
was sown in the past, and had its roots sometimes in days anterior