This book is the unexpected result of a brief visit which the Maréchale paid her daughter and the writer in the spring of this year. She was daily persuaded, not so much to talk of the past, as to live parts of her life over again, for in her case the telling of a story is the enacting of a drama. At a meal-time she rarely keeps her seat, though she is apparently unconscious of leaving it and surprised that she requires to return to it. She begins to describe an incident, to recall a conversation, to sketch a character, and straightway she is suiting the word to the action, the action to the word, holding the mirror up to nature, using her brilliant dra matic gift, which is as natural to her as singing is to birds, to call up faces, to bring back voices, to restore scenes, which are all, whether grave or gay, summoned out of a dead past that has suddenly, as by the wave of a ma gician's wand, become once more alive. One day I said to her, Have you never thought of giving all this to the world? She answered, I am often asked to do so, and some day I may. Soon after she surprised me by saying, I have come to the conclusion that something ought to be written now, and you must write it. A mass of materials in English, French and German — reports, letters, diaries, magazines, and other documents — has therefore been put at my disposal. I have not used a tithe of what I have received, and much of what is left is as good as what has been taken. More will ere long, I doubt not, see the light. One of my best sources of information has been the Maréchale's own phenomenal memory, which I have tested times without number, and found invariably accurate, except in dates. Events are apt to be associated in her mind not so much with years as with homes and children, which are much more interesting.
