The Author who offers these tales has called them Bagatelle (a game, a diversion, a trifle), having been moved to write them through the poignant appeal of those aspects of the past, the decorations of peoples and an age long since gone, which to most appear but a game, a trifle—bagatelle. They might be named, too, stories of empty palaces, of closed mansions, of deserted castles, built to affront the enemy in the game of war, or to entertain the friend in the game of pleasure.