Although Monsieur Dumas cites contemporary authority for the final catastrophe as having actually taken place, to assume that any other portion of Banniere's career, as traced in this story, is founded upon fact. Dumas is himself responsible for the plot so far as it is concerned with the fortunes of Olympe and her ardent and headstrong lover. But the scenes which deal with the conspiracy to corrupt young Louis XV., and force him to adopt a career of unredeemed profligacy, are founded upon indisputable evidence, adapted, of course, to the exigencies of the narrative. The authority of contemporaneous memoirs may be cited in support of some of the most improbable details; for example, the queen's coldness toward the king, and the various anecdotes concerning Mademoiselle de Charolais. With his usual matchless skill, Alexandre Dumas has so interwoven history and romance that each embellishes the other; and the result is a harmonious and intensely interesting whole, albeit the period was conspicuously lacking in those stirring, chivalric incidents which furnished the themes for the marvelous romances of the days of the Valois kings and the first Bourbons.