PREFACE. I WOULD fain beg of all benevolent and kindlydisposed persons three privileges as essential to the telling of my tale. First, that I may be allowed to abstain from strategy, for I confess I am no strategist-indeed, during the whole time. the siege lasted, I did not so much as possess "a. plan of my own" for the Deliverance of Paris. The second is permission to tell my story in my own way, without invention or embellishment; and the third, that I may be relieved from the irksome responsibility of passing sentence of condemnation or approval upon what I narrate. My object is to bring forward as faithfully as I could observe it, whatever may tend to dispel the con |