OF THE VATICAN, SIMANCAS, VENICE, PARIS, VIENNA, AND FLORENCE. TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL FRENCH BY HUBERT E. H. JERNINGHAM. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. All rights reserved. PREFACE BY THE TRANSLATOR. ANXIOUS as I have been to render my translation of the present work a faithful reproduction of the original, I must apologise for the literal rendering of many phrases which have no equivalent in English and indeed are no longer used in French. Baron de Hübner has applied himself so diligently to the task of removing the veil by which the true character of Pope Sixtus V. had been obscured by contemporary historians, that his quotations have been necessarily multiplied to a degree which he could not at first have anticipated. Many of the quotations are themselves translations from the Spanish, Italian, and Latin languages; while many expressions in the correspondence of French diplomatists of the period are either no longer in use, or have lost the sense in which they were then employed. |