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Author of "Come Rack! Come Rope!", "Lord of the World," "Initiation,"etc.
1914AUTHOR'S NOTE.
I wish to express my gratitude for great help received in the writing ofthis book to Miss MacDermot, Miss Stearne and others, as well as tothree friends who submitted to hearing it read aloud in manuscript, andwho assisted me by their criticisms and suggestions.
Further, I think it worth saying that in all historical episodes in thisbook I have taken pains to be as accurate as possible. The variousplots, the political movements, and the closing scenes of Charles II'slife are here described with as much fidelity to truth as is compatiblewith historical romance. In particular, I do not think that the Kinghimself is represented as doing or saying anything—except of course tomy fictitious personages—to which sound history does not testify. Ihave also taken considerable pains in the topographical descriptions ofWhitehall.
The day from which I reckon the beginning of all those adventures whichoccupied me in the Courts of England and France and elsewhere, was thefirst day of May in the year sixteen hundred and seventy-eight—the day,that is, on which my Lord Abbot carried me from St. Paul's-without-the-Walls to the Vatican Palace, to see our Most Holy Lord Innocent theEleventh.
It had been a very hot day in Rome, as was to be expected at thatseason; and I had stayed in the cloister in the cool, as my Lord Abbothad bidden me, not knowing whether it would be on that day or another,or, indeed, on any at all, that His Holiness would send for me. I knewthat my Lord Abbot had been to the Vatican again and again on thebusiness; and had spoken of me, as he said he would, not to the HolyFather only, but to the Cardinal Secretary of State and to others; but Idid not know, and he did not tell me, as to whether that business hadbeen prosperous; though I think he must have known long before how itwould end. An hour before Ave Maria, then, he sent to me, as I walkedin the cloisters, and when I came to him, told me, all short, to dressmyself in my old secular clothes, as fine as I could, and to be ready toride with him in half an hour, because our Most Holy Lord had consentedto receive me one hour after Ave Maria. He said nothing more to methan that; he did not tell me how I was to bear myself, nor what I wasto say, neither as I stood in his cell, nor as we rode as fast as wecould, with the servants before and behind, into Rome and through thestreets of it. I knew nothing more than this—that since neither I normy novice-master were in the least satisfied as to my vocation, andsince I had considerable estates of my own in France (though I was anEnglishman altogether on my father's side), and could speak both Frenchand English with equal ease, and Italian and Spanish tolerably—thatsince, in short, I was a very well-educated young gentleman, and lookedmore than my years, and bore myself—(so I was told)—with ease anddiscretion in any company, and could act a part if it were required ofme—I might perhaps be of better service to the Church in some secularemployment than in sacred. This was all that I knew. The rest my LordAbbot left to my own wits to understand, and to our Holy Father, if hewould, to discover to me: and that, indeed, was presently what he did.
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