A Huguenot family flees Louis XIV's France after the Revocation and ends up in the forests of Canada among Iroquois and coureurs de bois — Versailles in the first half, the wilderness in the second. Conan Doyle published it in 1893, the year he tried to kill Sherlock Holmes; historical fiction was the work he wanted to be remembered for, and the court scenes with Madame de Maintenon show why. Fifty-four plates, from Rigaud and van der Meulen, carry the courts and campaigns of Louis XIV's France across the same years the Huguenots lose them.
