Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source:
https://books.google.com/books?id=h9ghAAAAMAAJ
(the New York Public Library)

AGNES SOREL.

A Novel

BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.,

AUTHOR OF
"LIFE OF VICISSITUDES," "PEQUINILLO," "THE FATE," "AIMS AND
OBSTACLES," "HENRY SMEATON," "THE WOODMAN," &c., &c., &c.

NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
329 & 331 PEARL STREET,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1864

Entered, according to Act of Congress,in the year one thousand eight hundred and fifty-three, by

GEORGE P. R. JAMES,

in the Office of the Clerk of the District Court of the Southern District of NewYork.

TO

MAUNSELL B. FIELD, ESQ.,

NOT ONLY AS THE COMPANION OF SOME OF MY LITERARY LABORS, BUT
AS MY DEAR FRIEND; NOT ONLY AS A GENTLEMAN AND A MAN
OF HONOR, BUT AS A MAN OF GENIUS AND OF FEELING;
NOT ONLY AS ONE WHO DOES HONOR TO HIS OWN
COUNTRY, BUT AS ONE WHO WOULD DO
HONOR TO ANY,

This Book is Dedicated, with sincere Regard,

BY G. P. R. JAMES.

AGNES SOREL.

CHAPTER I.

How strange the sensation would be, how marvelouslyinteresting thescene, were we to wake up from some quiet night's rest and findourselves suddenly transported four or five hundred years back--livingand moving among the men of a former age!

To pass from the British fortress of Gibraltar, with drums and fifes,red coats and bayonets, in a few hours, to the coast of Africa, andfind one's self surrounded by Moors and male petticoats, turbans andcimeters, is the greatest transition the world affords at present; butit is nothing to that of which I speak. How marvelously interestingwould it be, also, not only to find one's self brought in closecontact with the customs, manners, and characteristics of a formerage, with all our modern notions strong about us, but to be met atevery turn by thoughts, feelings, views, principles, springing out ofa totally different state of society, which have all passed away, andmoldered, like the garments in which at that time men decoratedthemselves.

Such, however, is the leap which I wish the reader to take at thepresent moment; and--although I know it to be impossible for him todivest himself of all those modern impressions which are a part of hisidentity--to place himself with me in the midst of a former period,and to see himself surrounded for a brief space with the people, andthe things, and the thoughts of the fifteenth century.

Let me premise, however, in this prefatory chapter, that the object ofan author, in the minute detail of local scenery and ancient customs,which he is sometimes compelled to give, and which are often objectedto by the animals with long ears that browse on the borders ofParnassus, is not so much to show his own learning in antiquarianlore, as to imbue his reader with such thoughts and feelings as mayenable him to comprehend the motives of the persons ac

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