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Late Lecturer on French Language and Literature, University College, Liverpool,
and Victoria University.

SOLE AUTHORISED EDITION.

LIBRAIRIE HACHETTE & Cie
LONDON: 18, KING WILLIAM STREET, CHARING CROSS.
PARIS: 79, BOULEVARD SAINT-GERMAIN.-

BOSTON: CARL SCHOENHOF.

1892.

All Rights reserved.

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INTRODUCTION.

INSTEAD of discussing the theory on which the author of Cinq-Mars based his work, we have extracted from M. Sainte-Beuve's Causeries and Portraits a brief notice on Alfred de Vigny, and an exhaustive criticism on Cinq-Mars, which require no comment on our part.

In the Notes are pointed out some of the anachronisms which the author thought justifiable from an artistic point of view; but it is not necessary to discuss his opinions and statements, Cinq-Mars being avowedly a work of fiction, not a history. The Notes are intended to elucidate the text and to aid the reader in understanding and rendering into English the difficult expressions with which the book abounds. They will be found to contain also short notices on the names of persons and places introduced into the narrative, and much attention has been devoted to the difficulties in French construction suggested by the text. Finally, the important and novel addition of an Index to the principal notes will facilitate reference to them after as well as during the reading of the book.

I.

The Comte Alfred de Vigny was born at Loches in Touraine, March 27th, 1797, and died Sept. 17th, 1863; he entered as lieutenant (June 1st, 1814) the regiment of "gendarmes de la Maison rouge" of Louis XVIII., and accompanied that Sovereign to the frontier, March 20th, 1815. After the hundred days he entered (March, 1816) as sub-lieutenant the Royal bodyguard, became lieutenant in July, 1822, and passed a

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