The Old Curiosity Shop.

ALL IN A MOMENT SHE WAS LOOKING AT HIM, FULL Fr.      [P. 593]

The Cloister and the Hearth

CHARLES READE

PREFACE

A small

After writing it, I took wider views of the subject, and also felt uneasy at having deviated unnecessarily from the historical outline of a true story. These two sentiments have cost me more than a year's very hard labour, which I venture to think has not been wasted. After this plain statement I trust all who comment on this work will see that, to describe it as a reprint, would be unfair to the public and to me. The English language is copious and, in any true man's hands, quite able to convey the truth; namely, that one fifth of the present work is a reprint, and four fifths of it a new composition.

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THE CLOISTER AND THE HEARTH

THE CLOISTER & THE HEARTH

CHAPTER I

Thus records of prime truths remain a dead letter to plain folk; the writers have left so much to the imagination, and imagination is so rare a gift. Here, then, the writer of fiction may be of use to the public—as an interpreter.

There is a musty chronicle, written in tolerable Latin, and in it a chapter where every sentence holds a fact. Here is told, with harsh brevity, the strange history of a pair, who lived untrumpeted, and died unsung, four hundred years ago; and lie now, as unpitied, in that stern page, as 

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