NEW BODIES FOR OLD

Copyright, 1923
By MAURICE RENARD


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

To H. G. Wells:

I beg you, Sir, to accept this book.

Of all the pleasures that its writing gave me,that of dedicating it to you is assuredly not theleast.

I conceived it under the inspiration of ideasthat you cherish, and I could have wished that ithad come nearer to your own works than it does,not in merit—that would be an absurd pretension—but,at any rate, in that pleasant quality shownin all your books, which allows the chastest minds,as well as those that exact the greatest realism, tohave communion with your genius—a communionwhich the ablest people of our time can acknowledgewithout feeling its charm lessened by suchconsiderations.

But when Fortune for good or ill allowed meto discover the subject of this allegorical novel, Ifelt bound not to set it aside because of a fewaudacities which a faithful rendering involved andwhich an arrest of development alone—that is, acrime against the literary conscience—could avoid.

[vi]You now know—you could have guessed asmuch—what I should like people to think of mywork, if by chance any one did it the unexpectedhonor of thinking about it at all. Far from desiringto arouse the creature of instinct in myreader and amuse him with scandalous descriptions,my work is addressed to the philosopheranxious for Truth amid the marvels of Fiction andfor Orderliness amid the tumult of imaginaryAdventures.

That, Sir, is why I beg you to accept it.

M. R.