Written as the recollections of Margaret de Ribaumont, Viscountess of Bellaise, the novel follows a young woman into the salons and garrisons of seventeenth-century France as the civil wars of the Fronde divide court and nobility. Her pages take in a wary marriage, the polished world of the Salon Bleu, a costly victory, the two queens and the exiled English cavaliers.
Yonge admits it became rather a family record than a novel, which is exactly its charm for readers of The Chaplet of Pearls. Download the free EPUB.