Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But while all this was being done to Damiens, other steps were being taken by Justice, the which narrowly concerned me. As he would denounce no Accomplices, real or imaginary, the Police did their best to find out his Confederates for themselves, and by diligent Inquiry made themselves acquainted with all Damiens' movements for days before he committed his Crime.
When the Horses were Lashed, to make 'em pull Lustily, the Fine Ladies at the windows fluttered their Fans, and, in their sweet little Court Lingo, cried out compassionately, "Oh, les pauv' Zevaux!" "Oh, the poor Dobbins!" They didn't say any thing about a poor Damiens.
This Cour de Marbre, on January 5, 1757, was the scene of the infamous attack on Louis XV by Damiens, just as the king was starting out for the Trianon. A thick redingote saved the king's life; but for "this mere pin-prick," according to Voltaire, the monarch went immediately to bed, and five times in succession sought absolution for his sins. Sins lay heavy even on royal heads in those days.
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.
His dagger pierced the mantle of the King, but merely grazed his neck. Damiens, who had stumbled, was instantly seized and dragged to prison, where a convocation of expert torturers exhausted their ingenuity in the attempt to extort a confession implicating the Jesuits, a conspiracy of Huguenots, etc. But Damiens refused to speak.
Damiens was but a thick-witted, superstitious valet, who, more or less persecuted by the noble employers with whom he had been in service at various times, sought to avenge himself, not on them, but on their king, as the figurehead of all that was rotten in the social hierarchy.
As for this most miserable Red-faced Man, Robert François Damiens, this is what was done to him. At first handling, he was very nearly murdered by the Young Gentlemen Officers of the Body Guard, who, having tied him to a Bench, pricked him with their Sword Points, beat him with their Belts, and pummelled him about the Mouth with the Butt-ends of Pistols.
If a commoner gave a noble even so much as a Damiens-scratch which didn't kill or even hurt, he got Damiens' dose for it just the same; they pulled him to rags and tatters with horses, and all the world came to see the show, and crack jokes, and have a good time; and some of the performances of the best people present were as tough, and as properly unprintable, as any that have been printed by the pleasant Casanova in his chapter about the dismemberment of Louis XV's poor awkward enemy.
Coffee, tobacco, pipes, extra clothing, knives, toys, books, pictures, working implements and materials, have all been possessed by them in happier days; and though packages of such things have been sent by the charitable for distribution by Father Damiens, it is not possible for island benevolence fully to meet an emergency and needs so disproportionate to the population and resources of the kingdom.
"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.
Word Of The Day