The Chronicles of Count Antonio

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Chronicles of Count Antonio, by Anthony Hope
WITH PHOTOGRAVURE FRONTISPIECE BY S. W. VAN SCHAICK
NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1895
Copyright, 1895, By ANTHONY HOPE.
Copyright, 1895, By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
TO THE HONOURABLE SIR HENRY HAWKINS. My dear Sir Henry : It gives me very great pleasure to be allowed to dedicate this book to you. I hope you will accept it as a token of thanks for much kindness, of your former Marshal's pleasant memory of his service, and of sincere respect for a clear-sighted, firm, and compassionate Judge. Your affectionate cousin, A. H. H. London, August, 1895.
Behold! She is free.
Chapter V.
Countless are the stories told of the sayings that Count Antonio spoke and of the deeds that he did when he dwelt an outlaw in the hills. For tales and legends gather round his name thick as the berries hang on a bush, and with the passage of every succeeding year it grows harder to discern where truth lies and where the love of wonder, working together with the sway of a great man's memory, has wrought the embroidery of its fancy on the plain robe of fact. Yet, amid all that is of uncertain knowledge and so must rest, this much at least should be known and remembered for the honour of a noble family, how it fell out that Count Antonio, a man of high lineage, forsook the service of his Prince, disdained the obligation of his rank, set law at naught, and did what seemed indeed in his own eyes to be good but was held by many to be nothing other than the work of a rebel and a brigand. Yet, although it is by these names that men often speak of him, they love his memory; and I also, Ambrose the Franciscan, having gathered diligently all that I could come by in the archives of the city or from the lips of aged folk, have learned to love it in some sort. Thus I am minded to write, before the time that I must carry what I know with me to the grave, the full and whole truth concerning Antonio's flight from the city and the Court, seeking in my heart, as I write, excuse for him, and finding in the record, if little else, yet a tale that lovers must read in pride and sorrow, and, if this be not too high a hope, that princes may study for profit and for warning.