PRINCES AND POISONERS
BY THE SAME AUTHOR AND TRANSLATOR
LEGENDS OF THE BASTILLE. By Frantz Funck-Brentano. With an Introductionby Victorien Sardou. Translated by George Maidment. 1899. Crown 8vo.Cloth, 6s.
Contents.—I. The Archives; II. History of the Bastille; III. Life inthe Bastille; IV. The Man in the Iron Mask; V. Men of Letters in theBastille; VI. Latude; VII. The Fourteenth of July.
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LONDON: DOWNEY AND CO., LIMITED.
PORTRAIT OF GABRIEL NICOLAS DE LA REYNIE
LIEUTENANT-GENERAL OF POLICE
(Engraved by Van Schuppen, after the painting by Mignard)
Princes and Poisoners
STUDIES OF THE COURT OF LOUIS XIV
BY
FRANTZ FUNCK-BRENTANO
TRANSLATED BY
GEORGE MAIDMENT
L O N D O N
D U C K W O R T H and CO.
3 HENRIETTA STREET, W.C.
1901
Second Impression, May 1901
All rights reserved.
PREFATORY NOTE
TWELVE months ago I had the honour of introducing M. FrantzFunck-Brentano to the English public by my translation of his Légendeset Archives de la Bastille, and in my preface to that book I gave arapid sketch of his career which need not be repeated. If history is tobe continually reconstructed, or rather, perhaps, to undergo a processof destructive distillation, there is no one more competent than M.Funck-Brentano to perform the feat. We lose our illusions with ourteeth; the fables that charmed our childhood dissolve in the modernhistorian’s test-tube, and the mysteries that fascinated our forebearsbecome clear with a few drops of his critical acid.
In his former book, M. Funck-Brentano solved once for all the mystery