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xii
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

make some allowance for several obvious imperfections the discerning reader may meet with in the course of his reading; for it is much easier to erect a perfect edifice, if we are at liberty to choose our materials at pleasure, than when we design to interweave parts that already exist, and cannot be altered. Finally, the Translator thinks it needful to observe, that if the mysterious events occurring in the subsequent volumes, are not elucidated with that tiresome minuteness which renders many of our modern novels rather tedious than interesting, he flatters himself that the judicious readers will not be displeased at his confidence in their own ingenuity, which sufficiently will be enabled, by the hints the author has dropt to that purpose, to dispel the mystic gloom which he has been prevented to remove by the truth of Voltaire's words:

Le Secret d'en nuyer est le secret de tout dire.

THE

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