Excerpt from Belle Rose: A Romance of the Cloak and SwordAs a historical novelist Achard belongs to the same family as the elder Dumas. In fact, he comes nearer in every respect to measuring up to the standard of the famous author of Les Trois Mousquetaires than any of his contemporaries. We all know the methods of this school. It is simply to take some obscure d'artagnan from the provinces, transport him to Paris, make him ascend the various rounds of the ladder, and see to it that he dies either a colonel in the King's Musketeers, or a Marshal of France. The story is old, but it is always new. Each writer who takes the same well-known theme has a chance to paint new dec orations with which to stage it, new characters to vary its monot ony, new incidents to surprise the reader.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.