, loves at the same time history and the drama,
because the one explores the vast destinies of humanity, and the other
the individual lot of man. These embrace the whole of life. But it is
the province of religion, of philosophy, of pure poetry only, to go
beyond life, beyond time, into eternity.

Of late years (perhaps as a result of our political changes) art has
borrowed from history more than ever. All of us have our eyes fixed on
our chronicles, as though, having reached manhood while going on toward
greater things, we had stopped a moment to cast up the account of our
youth and its errors. We have had to double the interest by adding to it
recollection.

As France has carried farther than other nations this love of facts, and
as I had chosen a recent and well-remembered epoch, it seemed to me that
I ought not to imitate those foreigners who in their pictures barely
show in the horizon the men who dominate their history. I placed ours in
the foreground of the scene; I made them leading actors in this tragedy,
wherever I endeavored to represent the three kinds of ambition by which
we are influenced, and with them the beauty of self-sacrifice to a noble
ideal. A treatise on the fall of the feudal system; on the position,
at home and abroad, of France in the seventeenth century; on foreign
alliances; on the justice of parliaments or of secret commissions, or
on accusations of sorcery, would not perhaps have been read. But the
romance was read.

I do not mean to defend this last form of historical composition, being
convinced that the real greatness of a work lies in the substance of
the author's ideas and sentiments, and not in the literary form in which
they are dressed. The choice of a certain epoch necessitates a certain
treatment--to another epoch it would be unsuitable; these are mere
secrets of the workshop of thought which there is no need of disclosing.
What is the use of theorizing as to wherein lies the charm that moves
us? We hear the tones of the harp, but its graceful form conceals from
us its frame of iron. Nevertheless, since I have been convinced
that this book possesses vitality, I can not help throwing out some
reflections on the liberty which the imagination should employ in
weaving into its tapestry all the leading figures of an age, and, to
give more consistency to their acts, in making the reality of fact
give way to the idea which each of them should represent in the eyes of
posterity; in sho