Without detracting from the character-drawing, the characters, or the story in 'The Pomp of the Lavilettes', I was convinced that the book would not make the universal appeal.

Yet I should have written the story, even if it had been destined only to have a hundred readers.

It had to be written.

I wanted to write what was in me, and that invasion of a little secluded French-Canadian society by a ne'er-do-well of the over-sea aristocracy had a psychological interest, which I could not resist.

I thought it ought to be worked out and recorded, and particularly as the time chosen--1837--marked a large collision between the British and the French interests in French Canada, or rather of French political interests and the narrow administrative prejudices and nepotism of the British executive in Quebec.
It is a satisfaction to include this book in a definitive edition of my works, for I think that, so far as it goes, it is truthfully characteristic of French life in Canada, that its pictures are faithful, and that the character-drawing represents a closer observation than any of the previous works, slight as the volume is.