Count Robert of Paris (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: COUNT ROBERT OF PARIS. ADVERTISEMENT. [SIR Walter Scott transmitted from Naples, in February, 1832, an Introduction for Castle Dangerous; but if he ever 'wrote one for a Second Edition of Robert OF Paris, it has not been discovered among his papers. Some notes, chiefly extracts from the books which he had been observed to consult while dictating this novel, are now appended to its pages; and in addition to what the author had given in the shape of historical information respecting the principal real persons introduced, the reader is here presented with what may probably amuse him, the passage of the Alexiad, in which Anna Comnena describes the incident which originally, no doubt, determined Sir Walter's choice of a hero. May, A.d. 1097.?" As for the multitude of those who advanced towards THE GREAT City, let it be enough to say that they were as the stars in the heaven, or as the sand upon the seashore. They were, in the words of Homer, as many as the leaves and flowers of spring. But for the names of the leaders, though they are present in my memory, I will not relate them. The numbers of these would alone deter me, even if my language furnished the means of expressing their barbarous sounds; and for what purpose should I afflict my readers with a long enumeration of the names of those, whose visible presence gave so much horror to all that beheld ' them ? " As soon, therefore, as they approached the Great City, they occupied the station appointed for them by the Emperor, near to the monastery of Cosmidius. But this multitude were not, like the Hellenic one of old, to be restrained and governed by the l iud voices of nine heralds; they required the constant superintendence of chosen and valiant soldiers, to keep them from violating the commands of the Emperor....