The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Fair Penitent, by Wilkie Collins

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Title: A Fair Penitent

Author: Wilkie Collins

Posting Date: October 5, 2008 [EBook #2006]
Release Date: December, 1999

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A FAIR PENITENT ***

Produced by Christopher Hapka

A FAIR PENITENT

By Wilkie Collins

About "A Fair Penitent"

This story first appeared in Charles Dickens' magazine, "Household
Words," volume 16, number 382, July 18, 1857. Published anonymously, as
all contributions to the magazine were, it was attributed definitely
to Wilkie Collins by Anne Lohrli in her analysis of the magazine's
financial accounts.

A FAIR PENITENT

Charles Pineau Duclos was a French writer of biographies and novels,
who lived and worked during the first half of the eighteenth century. He
prospered sufficiently well, as a literary man, to be made secretary to
the French Academy, and to be allowed to succeed Voltaire in the
office of historiographer of France. He has left behind him, in his
own country, the reputation of a lively writer of the second class, who
addressed the public of his day with fair success, and who, since his
death, has not troubled posterity to take any particular notice of him.

Among the papers left by Duclos, two manuscripts were found, which he
probably intended to turn to some literary account. The first was a
brief Memoir, written by himself, of a Frenchwoman, named Mademoiselle
Gautier, who began life as an actress and who ended it as a Carmelite
nun. The second manuscript was the lady's own account of the process
of her conversion, and of the circumstances which attended her moral
passage from the state of a sinner to the state of a saint. There are
certain national peculiarities in the character of Mademoiselle Gautier
and in the narrative of her conversion, which are perhaps interesting
enough to be reproduced with some chance of pleasing the present day.

It appears, from the account given of her by Duclos, that Mademoiselle
Gautier made her appearance on the stage of the Theatre Francois in
the year seventeen hundred and sixteen. She is describ