“ ”

These Memoirs have been composed at different dates and in different countries. For this reason, I have been obliged to add some prefatory passages which describe the places that I had before my eyes and the feelings that were in my heart when the thread of my narrative was resumed. The changing forms of my life are thus intermingled. It has sometimes happened that, in my moments of prosperity, I have had to speak of times when I was poor, and in my days of tribulation, to retrace days when I was happy. My childhood entering into my old age, the gravity of experience weighing on the lightness of youth, the rays of my sun mingling and merging together, from its dawn to its dusk, have produced in my stories a kind of confusion, or, if you will, a kind of ineffable unity.