I do not mean to defend this last form of historical composition, being convinced that the real greatness of a work lies in the substance of the author’s ideas and sentiments, and not in the literary form in which they are dressed.  The choice of a certain epoch necessitates a certain treatment—­to another epoch it would be unsuitable; these are mere secrets of the workshop of thought which there is no need of disclosing.  What is the use of theorizing as to wherein lies the charm that moves us?  We hear the tones of the harp, but its graceful form conceals from us its frame of iron.  Nevertheless, since I have been convinced that this book possesses vitality, I can not help throwing out some reflections on the liberty which the imagination should employ in weaving into its tapestry all the leading figures of an age, and, to give more consistency to their acts, in making the reality of fact give way to the idea which each of them should represent in the eyes of posterity; in short, on the difference which I find between Truth in art and the True in fact.

Just as we descend into our consciences to judge of actions which our minds can not weigh, can we not also search in ourselves for the feeling which gives birth to forms of thought, always vague and cloudy?  We shall find in our troubled hearts, where discord reigns, two needs which seem at variance, but which merge, as I think, in a common source—­the love of the true, and the love of the fabulous.

On the day when man told the story of his life to man, history was born.  Of what use is the memory of facts, if not to serve as an example of good or of evil?  But the examples which the slow train of events presents to us are scattered and incomplete.  They lack always a tangible and visible coherence leading straight on to a moral conclusion.  The acts of the human race on the world’s stage have doubtless a coherent unity, but the meaning of the vast tragedy enacted will be visible only to the eye of God, until the end, which will reveal it perhaps to the last man.  All systems of philosophy have sought in vain to explain it, ceaselessly rolling up their rock, which, never reaching the top, falls back upon them—­each raising its frail structure on the ruins of the others, only to see it fall in its turn.

I think, then, that man, after having satisfied his first longing for facts, wanted something fuller—­some grouping, some adaptation to his capacity and experience, of the links of this vast chain of events which his sight could not take in.  Thus he hoped to find in the historic recital examples which might support the moral truths of which he was conscious.  Few single careers could satisfy this longing, being only incomplete parts of the elusive whole of the history of the world; one was a quarter, as it were, the other a half of the proof; imagination did the rest and completed them.  From this, without doubt, sprang the fable.  Man created it thus, because it was not given him to see more than himself and nature, which surrounds him; but he created it true with a truth all its own.