The historian must alternately contract his horizon and widen it.

If he undertake to tell an old story, he must needs successively--or sometimes at one and the same moment--assume the credulity of the folk he restores to life, and the discernment of the most accomplished critic.

By a strange process, he must divide his personality.

He must be at once the ancient man and the modern man; he must live on two different planes, like that curious character in a story by Mr.H.G.Wells, who lives and moves in a little English town, and all the time sees herself at the bottom of the ocean.
I have carefully visited cities and countries in which the events I propose to relate took place.

I have seen the valley of the Meuse amidst the flowers and perfumes of spring, and I have seen it again beneath a mass of mist and cloud.