PREFACE As he advances in life, a man runs the risk of stumbling against some ruin, and he walks escorted as if by a swarm of phantoms. Ruins and ghosts! It is the balance sheet of human things: ruins of illusions, ghosts of memories. It is enough to wander or to think to see oneself or rather to feel surrounded by all that is dead around us and by all that has become invisible. Who claimed that ghosts did not exist? They are everywhere; everywhere the aged man encounters, at the bend of a year which is ending, of an eloquent anniversary which speaks of the past, a crowd of things pale and half lost in the mist, and which are specters in truth, specters of affections or dead illusions. How many specters thus lodged in this Paris that the living thinks they live alone! In almost every room, closed or discreet nest, where two lovers love each other, two shadows slip, which formerly, in the same place also exchanged their kisses or their sighs. The world of ghosts holds as much space as the other.
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Jules Arsene Arnaud Claretie (1840-1913), was a French literary figure and director of the Theatre Francais. After studying at the lycee Bonaparte in Paris, he became a journalist, achieving great success as dramatic critic to Le Figaro and to the Opinion nationale. He was a newspaper correspondent during the Franco-German War, and during the Commune acted as staff-officer in the National Guard. In 1885 he became director of the Theatre Francais, and from that time devoted his time chiefly to its administration until his death. Claretie also wrote three operas for the music of Jules Massenet; La Navarraise (1894), based on his novel La Cigarette and written with Henri Cain, Therese (1907), and Amadis (1922), a work begun by Massenet in 1895, but shelved and finished in the last years of his life and premiered posthumously. Other works include Prince Zilah (1884), Cinq Ans Apres: l'Alsace et la Lorraine Depuis l'Annexion (1876), and Moliere, Sa Vie et Son OEuvre (1871).
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