Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source:
https://books.google.com/books?id=h9ghAAAAMAAJ
(the New York Public Library)
2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].
AGNES SOREL.
A Novel
BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.,
AUTHOR OF
"LIFE OF VICISSITUDES," "PEQUINILLO," "THE FATE," "AIMS AND
OBSTACLES," "HENRY SMEATON," "THE WOODMAN," &c., &c., &c.
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
329 & 331 PEARL STREET,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1864.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight
hundred and fifty-three, by
GEORGE P. R. JAMES,
in the Office of the Clerk of the District Court of the Southern
District of New York.
TO
MAUNSELL B. FIELD, ESQ.,
NOT ONLY AS THE COMPANION OF SOME OF MY LITERARY LABORS, BUT
AS MY DEAR FRIEND; NOT ONLY AS A GENTLEMAN AND A MAN
OF HONOR, BUT AS A MAN OF GENIUS AND OF FEELING;
NOT ONLY AS ONE WHO DOES HONOR TO HIS OWN
COUNTRY, BUT AS ONE WHO WOULD DO
HONOR TO ANY,
This Book is Dedicated, with sincere Regard,
BY G. P. R. JAMES.
AGNES SOREL.
CHAPTER I.
How strange the sensation would be, how marvelously interesting the
scene, were we to wake up from some quiet night's rest and find
ourselves suddenly transported four or five hundred years back--living
and moving among the men of a former age!
To pass from the British fortress of Gibraltar, with drums and fifes,
red coats and bayonets, in a few hours, to the coast of Africa, and
find one's self surrounded by Moors and male petticoats, turbans and
cimeters, is the greatest transition the world affords at present; but
it is nothing to that of which I speak. How marvelously interesting
would it be, also, not only to find one's self brought in close
contact with the customs, manners, and characteristics of a former
age, with all our modern notions strong about us, but to be met at
every turn by thoughts, feelings, views, principles, springing out of
a totally different state of society, which have all passed away, and
moldered, like the garments in which at that time men decorated
themselves.
Such, however, is the leap which I wish the reader to take at the
present moment; and--although I know it to be impossible for him to
divest himself of all those modern impressions which are a part of his
identity--to place himself with me in the midst of a former period,
and to see himself surrounded for a brief space with the people, and
the things, and the thoughts of the fifteenth century.
Let me premise, however, in this prefatory chapter, that the object of
an author, in the minute detail of local scenery and ancient customs,
which he is sometimes compelled to give, and which are often objected
to by the animals with long ears that browse on the borders of
Parnassus, is not so much to show his own learning in antiquarian
lore, as to imbue his reader with such thoughts and feelings as may
enable him to comprehend the motives of the persons acting before his
eyes, and the sensations, passions, and prejudices of ages passed
away. Were we to take an unsophisticated rustic, and baldly tell him,
without any previous intimation of the habits of the time, that the
son of a king of England one day went out alone--or, at best, with a
little boy in his company--all covered over with iron; that he betook
himself to a lone and desolate pass in the mountains, traversed by a
high road, and sat upon horseback by the hour together, with a spear
in his hand, challenging every body who passed to fight him, the
unsophisticated rustic would naturally conclude that the king's son
was mad, and would expect to hear of him next in Bedlam, rather than
on the throne of England. I let any one tell him previously of the
habits, manners, and customs of those days, and the rustic--though he
may very well believe that the whole age was mad--will understand and
appreciate the motives of the individual, saying to himself, "This man
was not a bit madder than the rest."
However, this book is not intended to be a mere painting of the
customs of the fifteenth century, but rather a picture of certain
characters of that period, dressed somewhat in the garb of the times,
and moved by those springs of action which influenced men in the age
to which I refer. It has been said, and justly, that human nature is
the same in all ages; but as a musical instrument will produce many
different tones, according to the hand which touches it, so will human
nature present many different aspects, according to the influences by
which it is affected. At all events, I claim a right to play my own
tune upon my violin, and what skills it if that tune be an air of the
olden times. No one need listen who does not like it.