legal question. The king had been carried away, slightly wounded by a
deep puncture from a penknife. In the soul of Louis XV. apprehension had
succeeded to the first instinctive and kingly impulse of courage; he
feared the weapon might be poisoned, and hastily sent for a confessor.
The crowd of courtiers was already thronging to the dauphin's. To him
the king had at once given up the direction of affairs.

[Illustration: Assassination of Louis XV. by Damiens----221]

Justice, meanwhile, had taken the wretched murderer in hand. Robert
Damiens was a lackey out of place, a native of Artois, of weak mind, and
sometimes appearing to be deranged. In his vague and frequently
incoherent depositions, he appeared animated by a desire to avenge the
wrongs of the Parliament; he burst out against the Archbishop of Paris,
Christopher de Beaumont, a virtuous prelate of narrow mind and austere
character. "The Archbishop of Paris," he said, "is the cause of all this
trouble through ordering refusal of the sacraments." 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. France had ceased to tremble for the life of King Louis XV.

For one instant the power of Madame de Pompadour had appeared to be
shaken; the king, in his terror, would not see her; M. de Machault, but
lately her protege, had even brought her orders to quit the palace.
Together with the salutary terrors of death, Louis XV.'s repentance soon
disappeared; the queen and the dauphin went back again to the modest and
pious retirement in which they passed their life; the marchioness
returned in triumph to Versailles. MM. de Machault and D'Argenson were
exiled; the latter, who had always been hostile to the favorite, was
dismissed with extreme harshness. The king had himself written the
sealed letter "Your services are no longer required. I command you to
send me your resignation of the secretaryship of state for war, and of
all that appertains to the posts connected therewith, and to retire to
your estate of Ormes." Madame de Pompadour was avenged.

The war, meanwhile, continued; the King of Prussia, who had at first won
a splendid victory ov