Introduction.—Anecdotes of Marguerite’s Infancy.—Endeavours Used to
Convert Her to the New Religion.—She Is Confirmed in Catholicism.—The
Court on a Progress.—A Grand Festivity Suddenly Interrupted.—The
Confusion in Consequence.
I should commend your work much more were I myself
less praised in it; but I am unwilling to do so, lest
my praises should seem rather the effect of self-love
than to be founded on reason and justice. I am
fearful that, like Themistocles, I should appear to
admire their eloquence the most who are most forward
to praise me. It is the usual frailty of our
sex to be fond of flattery. I blame this in other
women, and should wish not to be chargeable with it
myself. Yet I confess that I take a pride in
being painted by the hand of so able a master, however
flattering the likeness may be. If I ever were
possessed of the graces you have assigned to me, trouble
and vexation render them no longer visible, and have
even effaced them from my own recollection. So
that I view myself in your Memoirs, and say, with
old Madame de Rendan, who, not having consulted her
glass since her husband’s death, on seeing her
own face in the mirror of another lady, exclaimed,
“Who is this?” Whatever my friends tell
me when they see me now, I am inclined to think proceeds
from the partiality of their affection. I am
sure that you yourself, when you consider more impartially
what you have said, will be induced to believe, according
to these lines of Du Bellay:
“C’est chercher Rome en Rome, Et rien
de Rome en Rome ne trouver.”
(’Tis to seek Rome, in Rome to go, And Rome
herself at Rome not know.)
But as we read with pleasure the history of the Siege
of Troy, the magnificence of Athens, and other splendid
cities, which once flourished, but are now so entirely
destroyed that scarcely the spot whereon they stood
can be traced, so you please yourself with describing
these excellences of beauty which are no more, and
which will be discoverable only in your writings.
If you had taken upon you to contrast Nature and Fortune,
you could not have chosen a happier theme upon which
to descant, for both have made a trial of their strength
on the subject of your Memoirs. What Nature did,
you had the evidence of your own eyes to vouch for,
but what was done by Fortune, you know only from hearsay;
and hearsay, I need not tell you, is liable to be
influenced by ignorance or malice, and, therefore,
is not to be depended on. You will for that
reason, I make no doubt, be pleased to receive these
Memoirs from the hand which is most interested in the
truth of them.
I have been induced to undertake writing my Memoirs
the more from five or six observations which I have
had occasion to make upon your work, as you appear
to have been misinformed respecting certain particulars.
For example, in that part where mention is made of
Pau, and of my journey in France; likewise where you
speak of the late Marechal de Biron, of Agen, and
of the sally of the Marquis de Camillac from that place.
