Memoirs of Madame Manson, explanatory of her conduct, on the trial for the assassination of M. Fualdès

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Preface

JL HE Translator of the following Memoirs is convinced that he oflfers to the English Public a most striking and amusing production, combininff all the interest attached to an account of real facts and transactions of an extraordinary nature, with the vivid colouring, sudden transitions, and picturesque descriptions which distinguish works of fiction. The uncommon personage who unveils her mind and her character in her own wild and original manner, must be a study for the philosopher as well as an object of intense curiosity to the common observer. The strength of her feelings, llic fascination of her lan-

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guage, the energy and vigor of her conceptionSj form a powerful contrast with the weakness of her conduct and the aberrations of her reason. The mystery which still hangs over her motives^ amid pretensions of the most undisguised disclosures^ and the contradictions in her testimony without any apparent design to deceive^ add much to the interest of that extraordinary trial, in which she first made her appearance as a witness, and is now cited as an accomplice.

As it was impossible to separate her from that process in which she displayed such strange behaviour, as to make herself the heroine of the piece, and to confer a higher interest on a judicial scene already sufficiently notorious by the other principal persons, the crime for which they stood accused, the situation of the victim who had

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perished by it, the number of witnesses, and by various other circumstances, the translator has thought it his duty to prefix to the present Memoirs a notice of the murder, and to produce in the Appendix the chief depositions on the trial at Rodez.

It would be superfluous, and perhaps impossible, in him to attempt to give, or to succeed in giving any additional excitement to public attention, which is already so much alive on the subject, and which makes it necessary for every French, and almost every English journal, to have a daily article from Albi, as if something that aflccted the fate of Europe were there transacting.

The abstract of the Trial, and the translation of the Memoirs, which derive additional interest from the strange situation in which Madame Manson

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now stands, will, in their turn, have the effect of rendering the proceedings which are to take place against her as an accomplice, in March next, more intelligible, and, perhaps, more interesting.

London} February f 1818.