United States or Russia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


At court, the bastile or banishment was absolutely determined on, and a 'lettre de cachet' would have been issued had not M. de Voyer set forth in the most forcible manner that such a step would be ridiculous. Were I to say this pamphlet probably prevented a revolution, the reader would imagine I was in a dream.

She rose to take a nearer view of them, and informed me that one of them was named Saint-Huruge; that he was sold to the Duc d'Orleans, and was furious against the Government, because he had been confined once under a 'lettre de cachet' as a bad character.

The isolation in which the inhabitants of La Sarthe Chase lived could not be more complete. The Italian parlor had its own slightly pathetic cachet.

His own met them full; and a little tingling shock ran through him, as at the touch of an electric needle. "Some stars are dazzling enough at close quarters," he said boldly. "But surely 'distance lends enchantment' ?" "It depends a good deal on the view!" At that moment, up came Hayes, with his ineffable air of giving a cachet to any one he honoured with his favour.

"Mademoiselle, I confide to your care, and by oral <lettre de cachet>, the most amiable little devil in France. And now, mademoiselle du Barry, having nothing further to add, I pray God to take you to His powerful and holy keeping."

When Louvois had finished writing, Courtin, with some emotion, asked him what that lettre de cachet was? Louvois told him its purpose. Courtin remarked that it was surely an ungracious act, for that, even if the report were true, the King might be content to go no further than advising her to be more circumspect.

She was allowed to draw bills upon the treasury without specifying the service, and those who incurred her displeasure were almost sure of being banished from the court and kingdom, and perhaps sentenced, by lettre de cachet, to the dreary cells of the Bastille.

The functions of government were assigned to men already powerful by their social position. The absence of the centralised hierarchy of officials gave to Englishmen the sense of personal liberty which compelled the admiration of Voltaire and his countrymen in the eighteenth century. In England were no lettres de cachet, and no Bastille.

"The result will be that I shall go to the king, with whom I am on tolerably good terms, to whom I have been happy enough to render certain services dating from a period when you were not born, and who at my request, has just sent me an order in blank for M. Baisemeaux de Montlezun, governor of the Bastile; and I shall say to the king: 'Sire, a man has in a most cowardly way insulted M. de Bragelonne by insulting his mother; I have written this man's name upon the lettre de cachet which your majesty has been kind enough to give me, so that M. de Wardes is in the Bastile for three years." And D'Artagnan drawing the order signed by the king from his pocket, held it towards De Wardes.

On Forsyte 'Change and among his riverside friends it would be current that he had met a charming French girl on his travels and married her. There would be the flavour of romance, and a certain cachet about a French wife. No! He was not at all afraid of that.