This text recounts Charlemagne's personal life and his achievements in warfare, learning, art, building, and in the skillful administration of the state.

The narrator interrupts reminiscences about his childhood spent in late-nineteenth-century France to recall the affair which a friend of the family carried on with young Odette de Crecy.

Presents the French Revolution as the prototype of all revolutions and struggles of the people for freedom. Much of the plot is concerned with the safety of three little children.

"A solid, thought-provoking study of a far more complex world than historians of seventeenth-century Virginia have yet offered."--"Journal of Southern History"

This historical novel purportedly written by Joan's longtime friend -- Sieur Louis de Conte -- discloses Twain's unrestrained admiration for the French heroine's nobility of character.