Transcriber's Note:
1. Page scan source:
http://books.google.com/books?id=jQM1AAAAMAAJ
Is writing this book the Author has made no effort to point a moral;all that has been done is an attempt to catch the "spirit of the trueRomance," and to amuse. The book was partly written in the intervalsof work in India, and was completed during the leisure allowed byfurlough on medical certificate. In dealing with this period ofItalian history, in which the story is set, the Author would say hehas taken Dumas for his model, but hopes that he has worked out hisscheme on original lines; and he has used, as far as possible, thelanguage in which an Italian living in the beginning of the sixteenthcentury would express himself. At the time the book was written theAuthor had not read Mr. Stanley Weyman's brilliant novel, "A Gentlemanof France." Had he done so the style of the present book woulddoubtless have been much improved from the lessons taught by amaster-hand. The Author, in bringing this to the notice of the reader,would humbly add that he is making no challenge to break a lance withso redoubted a knight as the creator of Gaston de Marsac.