And still ascending the stream of time, we have hobnobbed with Montaigne
and Rabelais, and been personally bored by Malherbe, and sat at
Ronsard's feet, and ridden by Froissart's side, and slummed with
François Villon—in what enchanted slums! …
François Villon! Think of that, ye fond British bards and bardlets of to-day—ye would-be translators and imitators of that never-to-be-translated, never-to-be-imitated lament, the immortal Ballade des Dames du Temps jadis!
And while I speak of it, I may as well mention that we have seen them too, or some of them—those fair ladies he had never seen, and who had already melted away before his coming, like the snows of yester year, les neiges d'antan! Bertha, with the big feet; Joan of Arc, the good Lorrainer (what would she think of her native province now!); the very learned Héloïse, for love of whom one Peter Esbaillart, or Abélard (a more luckless Peter than even I!), suffered such cruel indignities at monkish hands; and that haughty, naughty queen, in her Tower of Nesle,
"Qui commanda que Buridan Fut jecté en ung Sac en Seine…."
Yes, we have seen them with the eye, and heard them speak and sing, and scold and jest, and laugh and weep, and even pray! And I have sketched them, as you shall see some day, good reader! And let me tell you that their beauty was by no means maddening: the standard of female loveliness has gone up, even in France! Even la très sage Héloïs was scarcely worth such a sacrifice as—but there! Possess your soul in patience; all that, and it is all but endless, will appear in due time, with such descriptions and illustrations as I flatter myself the world has never bargained for, and will value as it has never valued any historical records yet!
Day after day, for more than twenty years, Mary has kept a voluminous diary (in a cipher known to us both); it is now my property, and in it every detail of our long journey into the past has been set down.
Contemporaneously, day by day (during the leisure accorded to me by the kindness of Governor——) I have drawn over again from memory the sketches of people and places I was able to make straight from nature during those wonderful nights at "Magna sed Apta." I can guarantee the correctness of them, and the fidelity of their likenesses; no doubt their execution leaves much to be desired.
Both her task and mine (to the future publication of which this autobiography is but an introduction) have been performed with the minutest care and conscientiousness; no time or trouble have been spared. For instance, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew alone, which we were able to study from seventeen different points of view, cost us no less than two months' unremitting labor.
As we reached further and further back through the stream of time, the task became easier in a way; but we have had to generalize more, and often, for want of time and space, to use types in lieu of individuals. For with every successive generation the number of our progenitors increased in geometrical progression (as in the problem of the nails in the horseshoe) until a limit of numbers was reached—namely, the sum of the inhabitants of the terrestrial globe. In the seventh century there was not a person living in France (not to mention Europe) who was not in the line of our direct ancestry, excepting, of course, those who had died without issue and were mere collaterals.
[Illustration: "THE MAMMOTH.">[