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What cruel mortifications attend a fall from a throne! Let us now return to Guadalaxara. The officer of the guards, whom the Queen despatched with a letter for the King of Spain as soon as Madame des Ursins was out of Quadraque, found the King upon the point of going to bed. He appeared moved, sent a short reply to the Queen, and gave no orders. The officer returned immediately.
Our Saint himself often, indeed, practised bodily mortifications, but always with judgment and prudence, for he knew full well that the object of such austerities is the preservation of purity of soul, not the destruction of bodily health. In one word, he practically set the life of Jesus Christ before that of St. John the Baptist.
I made as if I ate some kinds of meat, though I did not take any. This deep inward attention suffered me scarcely to hear or see anything. I still continued to use many severe mortifications and austerities. They did not in the least diminish the freshness of my countenance.
Is it not possible, whatever might have been my insolence and assurance when I first took my seat, and however fond I might be at that time of obtruding my sentiments, that the many rebuffs with which I met, the repeated mortifications I experienced, the marks of fatigue and disgust with which my eyes were sure to be assailed wherever I turned them—one gaping here, another yawning there, a third slumbering in this place, and a fourth snoring in that—might so effectually have put to flight all my original arrogance, that, as we are apt to run into extremes, having at length become convinced of my comparative nothingness, in so august an assembly and one in which the science of government was so perfectly understood, I might sink into such a state of modesty and diffidence as not to be able to muster up resolution enough to break the seal of silence and open my lips even after the rays of light had begun to penetrate my understanding, and in some measure to chase away those clouds of error and ignorance in which it was enveloped on my first arrival?
She was seldom appreciated, in mixed company; she was too young, at that time, and too modest, for her intelligence to be generally known or cared for; while her personal appearance exposed her to be entirely overlooked and neglected by strangers; it had indeed occasionally been the cause of mortifications, more deeply felt by Miss Agnes, than by Elinor herself.
Though in town her timid eye in presence of certain personages would scarcely uplift its trembling lid, so much she felt her own insignificance, yet, in the country, till Lady Clementina arrived, there was not one being of consequence enough to share in her acquaintance; and she paid back to her inferiors there all the humiliating slights, all the mortifications, which in London she received from those to whom she was inferior.
If this story falls into the paws of any young cat who wishes to avoid the mortifications which have embittered my favoured existence, let me warn him to remember that a creature who has lived on friendly terms with human beings cannot be judged by common rules. Many a mouse's eye as bright as this one had I seen, but hitherto never one that did not paralyze before my own.
One of these scourged ladies, afterward married to a Russian magnate, was sent by Catharine as a sort of ambassadress to Sweden, for the purpose of inducing the King of Sweden to favor some of her political plans. "Memoires Secrets sur la Russie, par Masson," vol. iii., p. 392. From that time forward, however, Munnich's life was a continuous chain of vexations and mortifications.
Napoleon, on hearing the consequences of Marmont's defection, exclaimed, "Ungrateful man! but I pity him more than myself." Every hour thenceforth he was destined to meet similar mortifications. Berthier, his chosen and trusted friend, asked leave to go on private business to Paris, adding that he would return in a few hours.
He studied the eccentricities of that busy life, the schemes of that sordid avarice, the hopes of the politician who lurked behind the man of science; he was able to foresee the mortifications that awaited the only sentiment that lay hid in a heart that was steeled, but not of steel.
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