In accordance with many most excellent precedents, I might begin by claiming the sympathy due to an orphan alone in the world. I might even summon my unguided childhood and the absence of parental training to excuse my faults and extenuate my indiscretions. But the sympathy which I should thus gain would be achieved, I fear, by something very like false pretenses. For my solitary state sat very lightly upon me-the sad events which caused it being softened by the influence of time and habit-and had the recommendation of leaving me, not only free to manage my own life as I pleased, but also possessed of a competence which added power to my freedom. And as to the indiscretions-well, to speak it in all modesty and with a becoming consciousness of human frailty, I think that the undoubted indiscretions-that I may use no harder term-which were committed in the course of a certain fortnight were not for the most part of my doing or contriving. For throughout the transactions which followed on my arrival in France, I was rather the sport of circumstances than the originator of any scheme; and the prominent part which I played was forced upon me, at first by whimsical chance, and later on by the imperious calls made upon me by the position into which I was thrust.

'The Indiscretion of the Duchess' is an adventure-romance novel by Anthony Hope. Written in first-person, it follows the adventures of a man in Paris, who one morning, as he sat smoking his after-breakfast cigar in his rooms in St. James' Street, was suddenly visited by his friend Gustave de Berensac, who told him that the Duchess of Saint-Maclou is currently in residence—which piqued our protagonist interest, for he has always wanted to meet this woman.