5. One passage, or at most two, which, without being in any sense immoral, seemed to me to contain a little too much of the esprit gaulois to prove acceptable to English taste. I was anxious that not a line should appear which would prevent the universal reading of so fine a work.
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For the rest, I have striven to perform my task of translation, which has taken me over two years to accomplish, conscientiously, correctly, and above all respectfully. If here and there I have seemed to follow the original a little too closely, my excuse must be that I had too great a respect for this great man to take liberties with his writing. To reproduce his style in another language has been no easy matter: I have done my best.
The volumes will be found to be fully annotated. The author's own notes are so marked; those signed "B." are by M. Edmond Biré, the accomplished editor of the latest edition of the Memoirs, from which edition my version has, in the main, been made; those signed "T" are mine. I claim no merit of erudition for these notes: my aim has been merely to give the essential details concerning each new person, belonging to whatever period, mentioned in the work, and, whenever possible, to add the date of his birth and death. More particularly in the case of Chateaubriand's contemporaries, I thought it not without value to furnish a clue to the age and to the stage of their career which they had attained at the time when they were brought into contact with the writer. A full index of all persons mentioned in the Mémoires d'outre-tombe will be found at the end of the last volume.
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My thanks are due to M. Louis Cahen, of Paris, who has read and collated most of the proofs and suggested a happy solution of many a difficulty, and to Mr. Frederic J. Simmons for the care with which he has selected the illustrations to the several volumes.
A. T. de M.
Chelsea, December 1901.