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LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN 21 Bedford Street, W.C.
_This play was written at Viareggio in 1893, and passed an eventful though not unchequered existence for six years before it was produced by Mrs. Patrick Campbell at the Princess of Wales' Theatre, Kennington, on June 19, 1899. The version here published is not exactly that which was acted, though it is much nearer to the acted version than to the original play as it stood before I had the benefit of Mrs. Campbell's vivid and helpful criticism._
_I may remark here that the Play never had the ghost of a glimmer of a conscious political allusion in it; nor did it occur to me, when I put my Napoleonic hero in the surroundings which seemed to give most scope to his autocratic and unscrupulous genius, that any sane person would suppose that I wished to attack the Indian Civil Service. The plays on my bookshelves teem with villains of the most diverse professions, from kings and clergymen--chiefly, I must confess, Roman Catholics or Dissenters--to lawyers and journalists. I do not think I should chafe at the appearance of a villanous Professor of Greek. And on the whole I cannot help hoping that those of my critics and friends who adopted a high patriotic tone against this play, will upon reflection be inclined to agree that their imperial sensitiveness was a little overstrained._
THE RIGHT HON. SIR } _Sometime Chief Commissioner of Rajpor,_ DAVID CARLYON } _and formerly Political Agent in Bhojâl._
VERA CARLYON _His daughter: student of Medicine at Zurich._ ELIZABETH _A friend, acting as housekeeper to the Carlyons._ ADENE _A young writer on philological subjects._ DR. RHEINHARDT _A medical professor at the University of Zurich._ SELIM _A former servant of Sir David Carlyon._
A TRAINED NURSE A MANSERVANT A PUNKAH-BOY
(CARLYON _is a man approaching sixty, strong, genial, eagle-eyed_; ELIZABETH, _a nice-looking though slightly haggard elderly lady, with white hair, very quiet in demeanour_; RHEINHARDT, _a short man with an excitable manner and bristly iron-grey hair_.)