The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins.

Prologue, the storming of Sirinca-Petam, 1799, extracted from a family paper.

I address these lines written in India to my relatives in England.

My object is to explain the motive which has induced me to refuse the right hand of friendship

to my cousin, John Hurne Castle.

The reserve, which I have hitherto maintained in this matter, has been misinterpreted by

members of my family, whose good opinion I cannot consent to forfeit.

I request them to suspend their decision until they have read my narrative, and I declare

on my word of honor that what I'm about to write is strictly and literally the truth.

The private difference between my cousin and me took its rise in a great public event

in which we were both concerned, the storming of Sirinca-Petam, under General Baird on

the 4th of May, 1799.

In order that the circumstances may be clearly understood, I must revert for a moment to

the period before the assault and to the story's current and arcamp of the treasure in jewels

and gold stored up in the palace of Sirinca-Petam.

One of the wildest of these stories related to a yellow diamond, a famous gem in the

native annals of India.

The earliest known traditions describe the stone of having been set in the forehead of

the forehanded Indian God who typifies the moon.

Partly from its peculiar color, partly from a superstition which represented it as feeling

the influence of the deity who met adorned, and growing and lessening in lustre with

the waxing and waning of the moon.

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