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He began to tell me that his Name was ROBERT FRANÇOIS DAMIENS; that he had come from Picardy; that he had been a Stableman, a Locksmith, a Camp-follower, and a Servant at the College of Louis-le-Grand; that he had a Wife who was a Cook in a Noble Family, and a Daughter who coloured Prints for a Seller of Engravings. In short, he told me all save what I desired to know.
No investigation could discover any conspiracy or accomplices; with less coolness and fanatical resolution than Ravaillac, Damiens, like the assassin of Henry IV., was an isolated criminal, prompted to murder by the derangement of his own mind; he died, like Ravaillac, amidst fearful tortures which were no longer in accord with public sentiment and caused more horror than awe.
They singed off his skin by shreds, they wrenched out his teeth and finger-joints, they dragged him about at the end of a rope hitched to a team of stout horses, they sprinkled him from head to foot with acids and seething oil, but Damiens never uttered a sound till his dying groan announced the conclusion of the tragedy."
It was moreover established by the Police, that I had not been seen in Damiens' company after the Night I first met him, and that I had a legitimate call to be at Versailles on the day of the Assassination; so that after about a fortnight's detention I was set at Liberty, to my own great joy and that of my good and kind Mistress Lilias, who had now repaid ten-thousand-fold whatever paltry Service I had been fortunate enough to render her.
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.
When he spoke of Damiens, which was only while his trial lasted, he never called him anything but that gentleman. I have heard it said that he proposed having him shut up in a dungeon for life; but that the horrible nature of the crime made the judges insist upon his suffering all the tortures inflicted upon like occasions.
And, lo! as one looks on these 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 who 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!
Nothing can be more untrue. You might as well say that by dropping nitric acid slowly on a sore it would heal and become sound, and that torture dulled the sufferings of Damiens. The truth is, that each fresh application intensifies the pain. From one surprise after another, Gwynplaine had become desperate. That cup, his reason, under this new stupor, was overflowing.
He lighted a cheroot with hands whose tremblings, he devoutly hoped, were not apparent, for Prince Fribble had been ashamed to manifest a sincere emotion of any sort, and Paul Vanderhoffen shared as yet this foible. "Oh Brutus! Ravaillac! Damiens!" he drawled. "O general compendium of misguided aspirations! do be a duck and get along with you.
And she told over, detail by detail, how things had gone, how her mother had bidden her: "Go dress. We are going to the Place de Grève, to Monsieur Bienassis' shop, to see Damiens drawn and quartered," and what difficulty they had to force their way through the press of eager spectators.
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