PREFACE

This book is the unexpected result of a briefvisit which the Maréchale paid her daughterand the writer in the spring of this year. Shewas daily persuaded, not so much to talk of thepast, as to live parts of her life over again, forin her case the telling of a story is the enactingof a drama. At a meal-time she rarely keepsher seat, though she is apparently unconsciousof leaving it and surprised that she requires toreturn to it. She begins to describe an incident,to recall a conversation, to sketch a character,and straightway she is suiting the word to theaction, the action to the word, holding themirror up to nature, using her brilliant dramaticgift, which is as natural to her as singingis to birds, to call up faces, to bring backvoices, to restore scenes, which are all, whethergrave or gay, summoned out of a dead pastthat has suddenly, as by the wave of amagician's wand, become once more alive.

One day I said to her, "Have you neverthought of giving all this to the world?" Sheanswered, "I am often asked to do so, andsome day I may." Soon after she surprisedme by saying, "I have come to the conclusionthat something ought to be written now, andyou must write it."

A mass of materials in English, French andGerman—reports, letters, diaries, magazines,and other documents—has therefore been putat my disposal. I have not used a tithe ofwhat I have received, and much of what isleft is as good as what has been taken. Morewill ere long, I doubt not, see the light. Oneof my best sources of information has been theMaréchale's own phenomenal memory, which Ihave tested times without number, and foundinvariably accurate, except in dates. Eventsare apt to be associated in her mind not somuch with years as with homes and children,which are much more interesting.

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