WE THINK IT OUR duty to warn the public that, in spite of the title of this work and of what the Editor says of it in his Preface, we do not guarantee the authenticity of this narrative, and have even strong reasons for believing that it is but a romance.
aIt seems to us, moreover, that the author, who yet seems to have sought after verisimilitude, has himself destroyed that, and maladroitly, owing to the period which he has chosen in which to place these adventures. Certainly, several of the personages whom he brings on his stage have morals so sorry that it were impossible to believe that they lived in our century, in this century of philosophy, where the light shed on all sides has rendered, as everyone knows, all men so honorable, all women so modest and reserved.
Our opinion is, therefore, that if the adventures related in this work possess a foundation of truth, they could not have occurred save in other places and in other times, and we must censure our author, who, seduced apparently by his hope of being more diverting by treating rather of his own age and country, has dared to clothe in our customs and our costumes a state of morals so remote from us.
To preserve the too credulous Reader, at least so far as it lies with us, from all surprise in this matter, we will support our opinion with an argument which we proffer to him in all confidence, because it seems to us victorious and unanswerable; it is that, undoubtedly, like causes should not fail to produce like effects, and that, nevertheless, we do not hear today of young ladies with incomes of sixty thousand livres turning nuns, nor of young and pretty dame presidents
b dying of grief.