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The assassin Ravaillac, fanatically muttering through the streets of Paris, alternately hiding and swaggering throughout the loveliest month of May, when he thrust his murderous dagger through the royal coach, not only gave a death blow to Henri IV, but to many of these industries that the king had cherished for his people against the opposition of his prime minister.

"If it be asked," says Perefixe, "who were the friends that suggested to Ravaillac so damnable a design, history replies that it is ignorant and that upon an action of Such consequences it is not permissible to give suspicions and conjectures for certain truths.

Clement, and Ravaillac, and other worthies of a similar stamp, from whose purity of intention the world has hitherto withheld its due tribute of applause, would here have found a ready plea; and their injured innocence shall now at length receive its full though tardy vindication. "These however," it may be replied, "are excepted cases."

I saw the Concini beheaded, and Chalais ten years later they gave him thirty-four blows; and when I was a boy I escaped from the college and viewed from a great distance Ravaillac torn by horses that was in the year ten. But the horrible cries I now heard, filled me, perhaps because I was alone and fresh from the sight of Mademoiselle, with loathing inexpressible.

No pity was shown to Ravaillac, who was tortured in divers horrible ways. See the French Mercury, vol. I, fol. m., 455 et seq. Paul, I mean who should condemn to the extreme penalty all those whom he condemns to eternal death, would be accounted enemies of the human kind and destroyers of their communities.

There is in the Museum a death-mask, colored and exceeding life-like, taken the day after Ravaillac delivered the finishing knife-thrust in the Rue de Ferronnerie, which represents the Bèarnais as anything but a tamer of hearts. He was a fighter, however, from Wayback, and I dare say Dumas' narrative is quite as authentic as any.

"No doubt," said Milady, coolly, "such a woman may be found." "Well, such a woman, who would place the knife of Jacques Clement or of Ravaillac in the hands of a fanatic, would save France." "Yes; but she would then be the accomplice of an assassination." "Were the accomplices of Ravaillac or of Jacques Clement ever known?"

As for the miserable Ravaillac, it is pretended that he maintained under torture and to the very hour of his death that he had no accomplices, that what he had done he had done to prevent an unrighteous war against Catholicism and the Pope which was, no doubt, the falsehood with which those who used him played upon his fanaticism and whetted him to their service.

Finally, upon condition of ridding Europe of their presence, the posterity of Hapsburg were to be allowed the liberty of augmenting her territories in all the other known or yet undiscovered portions of the globe. But the dagger of Ravaillac delivered Austria from her danger, to postpone for some centuries longer the tranquillity of Europe.

Surely it might seem that Ravaillac had cut in twain not the vigour only but the honour and the conscience of France. But the envoys, knowing in their hearts that they were talking not with a French but a Spanish secretary of state, were not disposed to be the dupes of his tears or his blandishments.