administering the most crushing blow to France which she had suffered
for centuries--he would never see his child again; what need,
therefore, to publish his belief?

The hope that had sustained him for years was gone; the prayer he had
uttered by night and day, that once more he might hold his little
child in his arms and cherish and succour her, was gone, too; they
would never meet again. Let him go, therefore, to his doom unknown,
and, so going, pass away and be forgotten. And it might be that, with
him removed, God would see fit to temper to his child the adversity
that had fallen to his own lot.

CHAPTER XXXI.

ST. GEORGES'S DOOM

The _cours criminel_ on the banks of the Seine had been crowded all
day, and the judges seated on the bench began to exhibit signs of
fatigue at their labours. They had sat from ten o'clock in the morning
far into the afternoon, and, now that four o'clock was at hand, it
appeared as if their sitting would be still further prolonged; and
this in spite of the number of cases they had disposed of.

A variety of malefactors, or so-called malefactors, had on that day
received their sentences: some for professing the "reformed religion,"
as they blasphemously--in the judges' eyes--termed it; some for being
bullies and cutthroats; a student aged sixteen had been sentenced to
imprisonment in the Bastille for writing on the walls a distich on
Louis, stating that he had displaced God in the minds of the
French;[9] and a marchioness had been condemned to a fine of twenty
pistoles and to remain out of Paris for a year for having poisoned her
husband; also a spy, a Dutchman, supposed to be in the service of the
accursed Stadtholder and English king, had been condemned to death by
burning, his entrails to be first cut out and flung in his face; and
several petty malefactors--a drunken priest who had read a portion of
Rabelais to his flock instead of a sermon; a lampoonist who had
written a joke on the De Maintenon; an actor who had struck a
gentleman in defence of his own daughter; and a courtesan who had
induced a young nobleman to spend too much money on her--were all
sentenced to the Bastille, to Vincennes, and Bicetre for various
periods.

[Footnote 9: The distich ran:

"La croix fait place au lis, et Jesus Christ au Roi
Louis, oh! race impie, est le seul Dieu chez toi."

For writing it the student remained in prison _thirty-one years_.]

"Now," said Monsieur de Rennie,