The Project Gutenberg EBook of Catherine de' Medici, by Honore de Balzac

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Title: Catherine de' Medici

Author: Honore de Balzac

Translator: Katharine Prescott Wormeley

Release Date: August, 1999 [Etext #1854]
Posting Date: March 3, 2010

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CATHERINE DE' MEDICI ***

Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny

CATHERINE DE' MEDICI

By Honore de Balzac

Translated by Katherine Prescott Wormeley

DEDICATION

To Monsieur le Marquis de Pastoret, Member of the Academie des
Beaux-Arts.

When we think of the enormous number of volumes that have been
published on the question as to where Hannibal crossed the Alps,
without our being able to decide to-day whether it was (according
to Whittaker and Rivaz) by Lyon, Geneva, the Great Saint-Bernard,
and the valley of Aosta; or (according to Letronne, Follard,
Saint-Simon and Fortia d'Urbano) by the Isere, Grenoble,
Saint-Bonnet, Monte Genevra, Fenestrella, and the Susa passage;
or (according to Larauza) by the Mont Cenis and the Susa; or
(according to Strabo, Polybius and Lucanus) by the Rhone, Vienne,
Yenne, and the Dent du Chat; or (according to some intelligent
minds) by Genoa, La Bochetta, and La Scrivia,--an opinion which I
share and which Napoleon adopted,--not to speak of the verjuice
with which the Alpine rocks have been bespattered by other learned
men,--is it surprising, Monsieur le marquis, to see modern history
so bemuddled that many important points are still obscure, and the
most odious calumnies still rest on names that ought to be
respected?

And let me remark, in passing, that Hannibal's crossing has been
made almost problematical by these very elucidations. For
instance, Pere Menestrier thinks that the Scoras mentioned by
Polybius is the Saona; Letronne, Larauza and Schweighauser think
it is the Isere; Cochard, a learned Lyonnais, calls it the Drome,
and for all who have eyes to see there are between Scoras and
Scrivia great geographical and linguistical resemblances,--to say
nothing of the probability, amoun