Books: Touching History

THE EMPRESS OF HEARTS—E. Barring-ton—Dodd, Mead ($2.50).

Dumas' story of the diamond necklace, cause celebre, E. Barrington dismisses for its fictional parts and characters. "It needs no decoration from fiction, and I have told it as it happened . . . merely touching history with imagination and making the true characters live." Marie Antoinette was a lovely martyr in white dimity and ash-gold hair; Louis, her royal spouse, a wistful dullard who would have made an honest artisan. The worldly cardinal who passionately loved Antoinette nevertheless caused her miserable downfall because he...

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