Transcriber's Note
Throughout the text, the author's and publisher's original typesetting has been used for: choice of roman or italic text for French words and phrases; choice of three-dot or four-dot ellipses.
In addition to the frequent use of em-dashes, the original text also contains double-length em-dashes when an em-dash ends a sentence. These have been rendered in the transcription as ——.
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.