Publisher's Synopsis
This is a strange story, the bottom, carefully authentic, has been provided as nine tenths of materials that make up this book, the manuscript of "Daddy Gardner." But chance, here, has added, for accurate information give the good man, other information that we have possible to explain certain facts that our heroic nanny Dink regarded as frankly supernatural. These clarifications, thanks to which this drama will go great under the eyes of the reader in its bizarre and grim reality are then to two sources: a new chapter in the correspondence of the Duke of Rovigo, who had, as we know, the intimate confidence of the Emperor and who was responsible, during the retreat from Fouche (1802-1804), of controlling military police general, whose offices were Directors meeting at the Justice Department, headed by the Grand Judge Regnier, Duke of Massa. This is the first source. Second, all oral, consists of many conversations with the venerable MG ---- former private secretary of Count Dubois, Prefect of Police to the same time. We will take some political events, interiors, which tormented this period, immediately preceding the coronation of Napoleon. St. Rejant, Pichegru, Moreau, the infernal machine do not enter into our subject and it is hard if we see get that big man, Bru tus of royalty, bold and strong as a conjure antique Cadoudal. Foreign wars we take even less space. We heard in 1804 that the distant cannon of England. We have had a telling episode, it is true history, but bourgeois, and has no treaty or the plot of the firm or to victories and conquests. This is simply a page of the biography of this giant secret called Paris and who, in his life, had so many adventures! Let us leave aside the five hundred volumes of memoirs diffuse say white and black on this great crisis of our Revolution, and his back to the castle or hand hooked this good M. Bourrienne scribbles a few truths among heaps of lies well paid, let's dive of bias in the catch as Deep in the forest Paris. We hope that readers will not forget this touching and serene figure running through the pages of our introduction. There only stories in this book: our preface itself was still a story whose hero was called the "father Gardner." We are confident that the reader remembers another face, tender and good too, but in another way, less austere and more male, more tormented, especially less peaceful: the cantor of Saint-Sulpice, the provost of arms, in the Chambre Amours, taught so hard this beautiful forehand liberates hand hand, a Baron of Guitry, a gentleman of the king's chamber Louis XVI. A Gardner also: Gardner said Gateloup. This Gateloup, almost old, and Dad Gardner almost a child, will have roles in this story. One was the father of the other. And if I were permitted to go down even further in our common memories, I would remind you that dear little family, composed five children who were similar point, and whose father Gardner was good at the Dink: Eugenie, Jean and Angele who had the same age, and Louis Julien, toddlers. These five beings, abandoned, orphaned, but that God had clement made the best of fathers, will return everyone in our pen. They are by themselves, in the person of their parents, Legend lamentable suicide. Gardner Papa said, pointing to Angele, the prettiest of these girls, and one whose precocious pallor struck us as a sign of fatality: - This is a family of three links. He added that day or the girl has cast his eyes greedy through the ice of the morgue: - She has the idea ... Gardner because Dad believed in the transmission of a fatal heritage. History will show the first three Angele. History will show also the brand new marble tables virgin and yet not get deadly.
