The Cloister and the Hearth: A Tale of the Middle Ages

A TALE OF THE MIDDLE AGES BY CHARLES READE WITH SIXTEEN COLOURED ILLUSTRATIONS BY EVELYN PAUL
NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1931
PUBLISHED IN U. S. A., 1922 By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE CORNWALL PRESS, INC.
A small portion of this tale appeared in Once a Week , July—September, 1859, under the title of A Good Fight.
After writing it, I took wider views of the subject, and also felt uneasy at having deviated unnecessarily from the historical outline of a true story. These two sentiments have cost me more than a year's very hard labour, which I venture to think has not been wasted. After this plain statement I trust all who comment on this work will see that, to describe it as a reprint, would be unfair to the public and to me. The English language is copious and, in any true man's hands, quite able to convey the truth; namely, that one fifth of the present work is a reprint, and four fifths of it a new composition.

NOT a day passes over the earth, but men and women of no note do great deeds, speak great words, and suffer noble sorrows. Of these obscure heroes, philosophers, and martyrs, the greater part will never be known till that hour, when many that are great shall be small, and the small great; but of others the world's knowledge may be said to sleep: their lives and characters lie hidden from nations in the annals that record them. The general reader cannot feel them, they are presented so curtly and coldly: they are not like breathing stories appealing to his heart, but little historic hailstones striking him but to glance off his bosom: nor can he understand them; for epitomes are not narratives, as skeletons are not human figures.
Thus records of prime truths remain a dead letter to plain folk; the writers have left so much to the imagination, and imagination is so rare a gift. Here, then, the writer of fiction may be of use to the public—as an interpreter.
There is a musty chronicle, written in tolerable Latin, and in it a chapter where every sentence holds a fact. Here is told, with harsh brevity, the strange history of a pair, who lived untrumpeted, and died unsung, four hundred years ago; and lie now, as unpitied, in that stern page, as fossils in a rock. Thus, living or dead, Fate is still unjust to them. For if I can but show you what lies below that dry chronicler's words, methinks you will correct the indifference of centuries, and give those two sore tried souls a place in your heart—for a day.