United States or Mexico ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"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.
You have never had a regicide Bertrand de Gurdon, a Ravillac or a Damiens in Germany; but they have been common in France, and the Sovereigns of France cannot be too circumspect in their maintenance of ancient etiquette to command the dignified respect of a frivolous and versatile people.
Setting altogether on one side the Pretty Sight I should have presented had I been subject to the Hellish Tortures which this poor crazy Wretch Damiens underwent, I justly conceived an extreme Horror for this Fiendish yet frivolous People, who could mingle the twirling of Fans and the sucking of Sugarplums, with the most excruciating Torments ever inflicted upon a Human Being.
I shall see again the times when the Damiens, in the name of the parliaments, as one party says, in the name of the Jesuits, as the other party says, and, what is more true, in the name " The king suddenly paused; a deep shade of melancholy settled on his features, his noble head dropped on his bosom. Louis XV remained for some time motionless; at length,
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."
Now, they tell me, he is here." The travesty of their five-year-old interview at Bellegarde so tickled Ormskirk's fancy that he laughed heartily. "Damiens," said Ormskirk, to the attendant lackey, "go fetch me a Protestant minister from Manneville, and have a gallows erected in one of the drawing-rooms. I intend to pay off an old score."
Word Of The Day