PREFACE

This is no work of fiction. It is sober history; yet if the bare facts it tells were set forth without the connecting links, its preface might be made to look like the plot of a dime novel.

It is the story of a poor boy who inherited great wealth; who ran away from home to fight for liberty and glory; who became a major-general before he was twenty years old; who knew every nook and corner of the palace at Versailles, yet was the blood-brother of American Indians; who tried vainly to save the lives of his king and queen; who was in favor of law, yet remained a rebel to the end of his days; who suffered an unjust imprisonment which has well been called "a night five years long"; who was twice practically Dictator of France; and who, in his old age, was called upon to make a great decision.

But it is no work of fiction. It is only the biography of a French gentleman named Lafayette.