PREFACE
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I began this tale as early as 1820. On my way home from Italy in 1806 I became acquainted with Herr Sinclair in Frankfurt-am-Mainz, who showed me three dramas on this very remarkable incident; these contained so much that was beautiful, especially in their lyrical parts, but they were not sufficiently appreciated at that time and are now largely forgotten. They moved me at least — to such an extent that I looked up this great event in French history. I soon discovered that Catholic historians have ignored this remarkable affair as much as possible, while the persecuted have lamented their sufferings more than historical opinion has been able to express.
When I became acquainted by chance with François-Maximilien Misson's The Sacred Theatre of the Cévennes, a tale of the visions and destinies of those persecuted ones who had fled to England, which was published in London in 1711, the outline of this novella began to take shape in my mind. I then read the memoirs of [Claude Louis Hector de] Villars and as many other memoirs as I could find, but the work I found particularly helpful was the Histoire des Camisards (London, 1744). My work of fiction was almost finished, however, when I first became acquainted with the Histoire des Troubles des Cévennes, which was reprinted in Alès in 1819. This is manifestly the best work on this affair, and a new edition of a book which was first printed in 1760 but which has seldom appeared in print since then.
Dresden, June 1826.
L. T.