Excerpt from Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe, Vol. 1 of 2 The essential qualifications for an author of such a work as the present are an actual acquaintance with the persons mentioned, an intimate knowledge of their daily lives, and a personal familiarity with the scenes described. The author of William II. and Francis-Joseph, sheltered under the nom de plume of Marquise de Fontenoy, is a lady of distinguished birth and title. Her work consists largely of personal reminiscences, and descriptions of events with which she Is perfectly familiar; a sort of panoramic view of the characteristic happenings and striking features of court life, such as will best give a true picture of persons and their conduct. There has been no attempt to trammel the subject, - which embraces religious, official, social and domestic life, - by following a strictly sequential form in the narrative, but the writer's aim has been to present her facts in a familiar way, impressing them with characteristic naturalness and lifelike reality. To this task the author has brought the habits of a watchful observer, the candor of a conscientious narrator, and the refinement of a writer who respects her subject. Hence she presents a true, vivid and interesting picture of court life in Germany and Austria. If such merely sensational, and too often fictitious, unsavory tales as crowd tile so-called court narratives expressly concocted for the "society" columns of the periodical press are not the most prominent features of the present work, it is because they receive only a truthful recognition and place in its pages. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This 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.