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And, lo! as one looks on those poor relics of a bygone generation, the universe changes in the twinkling of an eye; old George the Second is back again, and the elder Pitt is coming into power, and General Wolfe is a fine, promising young man, and over the Channel they are pulling the Sieur Damiens to pieces with wild horses, and across the Atlantic the Indians are tomahawking Hirams and Jonathans and Jonases at Fort William Henry; all the dead people that have been in the dust so long even to the stout-armed cook that made the pastry are alive again; the planet unwinds a hundred of its luminous coils, and the precession of the equinoxes is retraced on the dial of heaven!
We are not all expected to be Damiens; a man may conceive his duty more narrowly, he may love his comforts better; and none will cast a stone at him for that. But will a gentleman of your reverend profession allow me an example from the fields of gallantry? Your Church and Damien's were in Hawaii upon a rivalry to do well: to help, to edify, to set divine examples.
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."
During the popular ferment the king was attacked in 1757 by a crack-brained fanatic named Damiens, who scratched him with a penknife as he was entering his coach at Versailles.
The Revolutionary rôle of the Conciergerie is a thing apart from the purport of this book, hence is not further referred to. Going back to the time of Francis I, among the famous prisoners of state were Louis de Berquin, the Comte de Mongomere, the regicides Ravaillac and Damiens, the Maréchal d'Ancre, Cartouche, Mandrin and others.
"The first event which made any impression on me in my childhood," she says in her reminiscences, "was the attempt of Damiens to assassinate Louis XV. This occurrence struck me so forcibly that the most minute details relating to the confusion and grief which prevailed at Versailles on that day seem as present to my imagination as the most recent events.
The King gave Marie Antoinette Petit Trianon. The luxuriance of the hothouses rendered the place agreeable to that Prince. He spent a few days there several times in the year. It was when he was setting off from Versailles for Petit Trianon that he was struck in the side by the knife of Damiens, and it was there that he was attacked by the smallpox, of which he died on the 10th of May, 1774.
I may not understand, I may not question; I can but accept. Now, then, let us prepare for dinner" he ended, in quite another tone. De Soyecourt yielded. He was shown to his rooms, and Ormskirk rang for Damiens, whom the Duke was sending into France to attend to a rather important assassination. At dinner Louis de Soyecourt made divers observations. First Gaston had embraced him.
We are not all expected to be Damiens; a man may conceive his duty more narrowly, he may love his comforts better; and none will cast a stone at him for that. But will a gentleman of your reverend profession allow me an example from the fields of gallantry? Your Church and Damien's were in Hawaii upon a rivalry to do well: to help, to edify, to set divine examples.
He was always following you, and I could at least learn from him whether you were well or poorly off. Oh! that man was positively mad about you!" So we've got as far as this, eh? Fanny now raised herself on her elbows, and listened to her mother's conversation with something of that shuddering curiosity with which Damiens regarded the wounds made in his body for the reception of the burning oil.
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