Chapter II: Epilogue: 288

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

The first four stories of Eugene Sue's series of historic novels--_The Mysteries of the People; or, History of a Proletarian Family Across the Ages_--are properly introductory to the wondrous drama in which, as indicated in the preface to the first story of the series, "one family, the descendants of a Gallic chief named Joel, typifies the oppressed; one family, the descendants of a Frankish chief named Neroweg, typifies the oppressor; and across and adown the ages, the successive struggles between oppressors and oppressed--the history of civilization--is thus represented in a majestic allegory." That wondrous drama opens with this, the fifth of the stories--_The Casque's Lark; or, Victoria, the Mother of the Camps_.

Here, for the first time, does a descendant of Joel, the Breton chief, encounter a Neroweg, the representative of the conquering race. Here they cross swords for the first time, their descendants meeting again and again in the course of the subsequent narratives, almost always in deadly encounter, each typical of the advancing stage of civilization in which the succeeding encounters occur.

In point of time, the scene of this story is about the third century of the Christian era. The great historic epoch which it describes is that in which, the star of the Roman Empire being in the decline and the Empire's hold upon Gaul having been greatly relaxed, the flood of the barbarian migration of nations flowed westward from the primeval forests and frozen fields of Germania, attempting to cross the Rhine and enter Gaul. Foremost among these hordes were the savage and warlike Franks, led by a number of independent chiefs. The present story describes the two forces--Franks and Gauls, the latter supported by the Romans--facing each other, frequently crossing swords in bloody encounters and holding each other in check. Out of this material, into which the thin thread of the initial introduction of Christianity in Gaul is woven in the woof, Sue constructed the present superb narrative--a fit overture for the following and successive fourteen acts.

DANIEL DE LEON

Milford, Conn. August, 1909.