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Does some disease of the mind or body, by contracting your muscles, bring back of a morning the wild horses that tear you in pieces at night, as with Damiens once upon a time? Were you driven to sup off your own dog in a garret, uncooked and without salt? Have your children ever cried, 'I am hungry'? Have you sold your mistress' hair to hazard the money at play?
The journey to Marly gave birth to a multitude of intrigues of persons who thought to wrap themselves up in profound mystery, and all whose actions we knew. The police were very active about the royal abodes, especially since the fatal deed of the regicide Damiens. To keep them perpetually on the watch, they were ordered to watch attentively the amours of the lords and ladies of the court.
No unworthy motives were suggested, all envious speech was hushed; it was almost forgotten by the most rigid Protestants that Father Damiens, who has literally followed the example of Christ by "laying down his life for the brethren," is a Romish priest, and an intuition, higher than all reasoning, hastened to number him with "the noble army of martyrs."
No: fulminate our rivals in Asia by all means, ye brave Russian revolutionaries; but to aim at an English princess-monstrous! hideous! hound down the wretch to his doom; and observe, please, that we are a civilized and merciful people, and, however much we may regret it, must not treat him as Ravaillac and Damiens were treated.
But the footsteps came and went, the doors were opened and shut again and again, and the traveller so waited, so hoped for did not return. The boy the brave bright son, who seemed to inherit all that was noblest and best in his father's nature pined for his mother. The man endured a martyrdom worse than the agony of Damiens, the slow tortures of La Barre. What had befallen her?
Each time on returning to my couch I found the number of my tormentors had been augmented: so I kept still, like an Indian at the stake, and only refrained for my friend's sake from singing a triumphant song as I found myself growing used to the pain and at last able to sleep a troubled sort of sleep, such as Damiens may have had on the rack.
"Chancellor," exclaimed Louis XV, stepping back with unfeigned astonishment, "have you lost your senses? What would the clergy say or do? The very thought makes me shudder. Do you then believe, M. de Maupeou, that the race of the Clements, the Ravaillacs, the Damiens, are extinct in France?" "Ah, sire, what needless fears." "Not so needless as you may deem them," answered the king.
Only one or two favoring circumstances were required to kindle the smothered fires of hatred into a blazing flame, and these were furnished by the attempted assassination of the King, in his garden at Versailles, by Damiens the fanatic, and the failure of La Valette the Jesuit banker and merchant at Martinique.
Meantime he was shaking the little vagabond's hand, chuckling and a-beam with hospitality. "Your Grace !" said Damiens, bewildered. "Well, go, in any event," said Ormskirk. "Oh, go anywhere, man! to the devil, for instance." His eyes, followed the retreating lackey. "As I suspect in the end you will," Ormskirk said, inconsequently. "Still, you are a very serviceable fellow, my good Damiens.
Duclos resumed: "Well," said he, "do you know the story of M. de C ? The first day the King saw company, after the attempt of Damiens, M. de C pushed so vigorously through the crowd that he was one of the first to come into the King's presence, but he had on so shabby a black coat that it caught the King's attention, who burst out laughing, and said, 'Look at C , he has had the skirt of his coat torn off. M. de C looked as if he was only then first conscious of his loss, and said, 'Sire, there is such a multitude hurrying to see Your Majesty, that I was obliged to fight my way through them, and, in the effort, my coat has been torn. 'Fortunately it was not worth much, said the Marquis de Souvre, 'and you could not have chosen a worse one to sacrifice on the occasion."
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