Les Tragiques

TO THE READERS

Here is the thief Prometheus, who, instead of grace, asks gratitude for his crime, and thinks he can justly make you a gift of what is not his, as having stolen for you what his master was stealing from himself; and, what is more, this fire that I have stolen would have had no air; it was a torch under a bushel. My charitable sin has brought it to light: I say charitable to you and to its author. From the midst of the extremities of France and even from farther away, notably from an old pastor of Angrogna, several writings seconded the remonstrances made by living voice through which the servants of God reproached him for his hidden talent, and someone in these terms: "We are weary of books that teach; give us some to move us, in an age where all Christian zeal has perished, where the difference between truth and falsehood is as if abolished, where the hands of the enemies of the Church hide the blood with which they are stained beneath presents, and their inhumanities beneath liberality. The Adiaphorists, the profane mockers, the traffickers in God's right, make show of their pleasant life, of their reward, and by their brilliance have dazzled the eyes of our young men, whom honor no longer pricks, whom peril no longer awakens."

My master replied: "What do you want me to hope among these bastardized hearts, except to see my book thrown into the refuse with that of The State of the Church, The Aletheya, the Wake-up Call, the Legend of Saint Catherine, and others of this sort? I will gain a place on the roll of fools, and, moreover, the name of turbulent, of republican; what I say about tyrants will be confused as being said about kings, and the loyal love and fidelity that I have shown with my sword to my great King until the end; the distinctions that I bring everywhere will be examined by those whom I offend, especially by iniquitous Justice, to have me declared criminal of lese-majesty. Wait for my death, which cannot be far off, and then examine my labors; chastise them for what friend and enemy can reproach in them, and then use them according to your equitable judgments." Such excuses did not prevent several learned old men from calling our author before God and protesting against him. Besides their remonstrances, I began to think thus: It has been thirty-six years and more since this work was made, namely during the wars of seventy-seven at Castel-Jaloux, where the author commanded some light cavalry; and, considering himself dead from the wounds received in a combat, he traced as if for a testament this work, which he was still able to polish and complete some years after. And where are today those to whom the actions, the factions and the monstrous things of that time are known, except to very few, and in a few days to none? Who will take after us the trouble of TO THE READERS

Who today will take the trouble to read the rare histories of our century, oppressed, extinguished and smothered by those of paid charlatans? And who, without history, will take pleasure in the violences of our author? Therefore, before the rest of memory, zeal and holy passions were extinguished, my good, my violent desire changed into courage: I stole from behind the chests and from under the wardrobes the muddy and torn papers from which I have extracted what you will see. I nearly abandoned my design because of so many erasures and abbreviations and words that the author himself could not read, due to the haste of his mind in writing. The gaps that you will see with regret displeased me at the beginning, and then I considered that they will one day compel a good father not to leave his children thus crippled. I even believe that we will bring the author to favor a second edition, where not only will the defects be filled, but some annotations will clarify the more difficult passages. You will find in this book a style often too concise, less polished than the works of the century, some rhythms according to the rule of his century, which does not appear today in the pieces that come from the same hands, and notably in some made expressly to rival the delicacy that is current. This is what I hope to present to you for the second part of my theft. What rekindled my desire and removed from me the fear of offense was seeing the shameless thefts of the owls of this time who were already gleaning in the fertile field before the harvest. I saw in the quatrains of Mathieu up to three consecutive verses stolen from the Treatise on the sweetness of affliction, which was a letter written promptly to Madame, of which I promise you the response in the collection that I hope to make. Thus the love of the Church, which has need of encouragements; the honor of him whom I offend, to whom I wish **TO THE READERS.**

to remove the negligence from his children, and from those thieves their prey, and then the obligation that I want to gain from the best men of this age, are the three excuses that I put forward for my sin. It now comes appropriately that I say something about the work of my master and about what is particular to him. I served him twenty-eight years almost always in the armies, where he exercised the office of field marshal with indescribable care and labor, considering the principal part of a captain to be present at everything. The most excellent of his pieces came from his hand either on horseback, or in the trenches, delighting not only in the diversion, but also in feeding his spirit with food out of time and season. …