ng her with dwarf
Negroes;--and a Most Christian King has unspeakable peace within doors,
whatever he may have without. "My Chancellor is a scoundrel; but I
cannot do without him." (Dulaure, Histoire de Paris (Paris, 1824), vii.
328.)

Beautiful Armida-Palace, where the inmates live enchanted lives;
lapped in soft music of adulation; waited on by the splendours of the
world;--which nevertheless hangs wondrously as by a single hair. Should
the Most Christian King die; or even get seriously afraid of dying! For,
alas, had not the fair haughty Chateauroux to fly, with wet cheeks
and flaming heart, from that Fever-scene at Metz; driven forth by sour
shavelings? She hardly returned, when fever and shavelings were both
swept into the background. Pompadour too, when Damiens wounded Royalty
'slightly, under the fifth rib,' and our drive to Trianon went off
futile, in shrieks and madly shaken torches,--had to pack, and be in
readiness: yet did not go, the wound not proving poisoned. For his
Majesty has religious faith; believes, at least in a Devil. And now
a third peril; and who knows what may be in it! For the Doctors look
grave; ask privily, If his Majesty had not the small-pox long ago?--and
doubt it may have been a false kind. Yes, Maupeou, pucker those sinister
brows of thine, and peer out on it with thy malign rat-eyes: it is a
questionable case. Sure only that man is mortal; that with the life
of one mortal snaps irrevocably the wonderfulest talisman, and all
Dubarrydom rushes off, with tumult, into infinite Space; and ye, as
subterranean Apparitions are wont, vanish utterly,--leaving only a smell
of sulphur!

These, and what holds of these may pray,--to Beelzebub, or whoever will
hear them. But from the rest of France there comes, as was said, no
prayer; or one of an opposite character, 'expressed openly in the
streets.' Chateau or Hotel, were an enlightened Philosophism scrutinises
many things, is not given to prayer: neither are Rossbach victories,
Terray Finances, nor, say only 'sixty thousand Lettres de Cachet' (which
is Maupeou's share), persuasives towards that. O Henault! Prayers? From
a France smitten (by black-art) with plague after plague, and lying now
in shame and pain, with a Harlot's foot on its neck, what prayer can
come? Those lank scarecrows, that prowl hunger-stricken through all
highways and byways of French Existence, will they pray? The dull
millions that, in the workshop or furrowfield, grind for