ffee of its own making,
and swallowed it with them hastily while the dogs were uncoupling for
the hunt, it was received as a grace of Heaven. (Campan, i. 11-36.) Poor
withered ancient women! in the wild tossings that yet await your fragile
existence, before it be crushed and broken; as ye fly through hostile
countries, over tempestuous seas, are almost taken by the Turks; and
wholly, in the Sansculottic Earthquake, know not your right hand from
your left, be this always an assured place in your remembrance: for the
act was good and loving! To us also it is a little sunny spot, in that
dismal howling waste, where we hardly find another.

Meanwhile, what shall an impartial prudent Courtier do? In these
delicate circumstances, while not only death or life, but even sacrament
or no sacrament, is a question, the skilfulest may falter. Few are so
happy as the Duke d'Orleans and the Prince de Conde; who can themselves,
with volatile salts, attend the King's ante-chamber; and, at the same
time, send their brave sons (Duke de Chartres, Egalite that is to be;
Duke de Bourbon, one day Conde too, and famous among Dotards) to wait
upon the Dauphin. With another few, it is a resolution taken; jacta est
alea. Old Richelieu,--when Beaumont, driven by public opinion, is at
last for entering the sick-room,--will twitch him by the rochet, into a
recess; and there, with his old dissipated mastiff-face, and the oiliest
vehemence, be seen pleading (and even, as we judge by Beaumont's change
of colour, prevailing) 'that the King be not killed by a proposition
in Divinity.' Duke de Fronsac, son of Richelieu, can follow his father:
when the Cure of Versailles whimpers something about sacraments, he will
threaten to 'throw him out of the window if he mention such a thing.'

Happy these, we may say; but to the rest that hover between two
opinions, is it not trying? He who would understand to what a pass
Catholicism, and much else, had now got; and how the symbols of
the Holiest have become gambling-dice of the Basest,--must read the
narrative of those things by Besenval, and Soulavie, and the other Court
Newsmen of the time. He will see the Versailles Galaxy all scattered
asunder, grouped into new ever-shifting Constellations. There are nods
and sagacious glances; go-betweens, silk dowagers mysteriously gliding,
with smiles for this constellation, sighs for that: there is tremor,
of hope or desperation, in several hearts. There is the pale grinni