al spirit should, even in a dying hour,
reflect with some complacency upon these crimes, believing that thus
he had been doing God service. It is this which gives to papal
_fanaticism_ its terrible and demoniac energy. The _sincere_ papist
believes "_heresy_" to be poison for the soul infinitely more dreadful
than any poison for the body. Such poison must be banished from the
world at whatever cost of suffering. Many an ecclesiastic has gone
from his closet of prayer to kindle the flames which consumed his
victim. The more _sincere_ the papist is in his belief, the more
mercilessly will he swing the scourge and fire the fagot.

Loudly, however, he deplored the madness of his ambition which had
involved Europe in such desolating wars. Bitterly he expressed his
regret that he left France in a state of such exhaustion,
impoverished, burdened with taxation, and hopelessly crushed by debt.

The condition of the realm was indeed deplorable. A boy of five years
of age was to inherit the throne. A man so profligate that he was
infamous even in a court which rivaled Sodom in its corruption was to
be invested with the regency of the kingdom--a man who was accused, by
the general voice of the nation, of having poisoned those who stood
between him and the throne. That man's sister, an unblushing wanton,
who had poisoned her own husband, presided over the festivities of the
palace. The nobles, abandoned to sensual indulgence, were diligent and
ingenious only in their endeavors to wrench money from the poor. The
masses of the people were wretched beyond description, and almost
beyond imagination in our land of liberty and competence. The
execrations of the starving millions were rising in a long wail around
the throne.

Thomas Jefferson, subsequently President of the United States, who,
not many years after this, was the American embassador at Paris,
wrote, in 1785, to Mrs. Trist, of Philadelphia,

"Of twenty millions of people supposed to be in France, I am of the
opinion that there are nineteen millions more wretched, more accursed
in every circumstance of human existence than the most conspicuously
wretched individual of the whole United States."

Even the Duke of Orleans, the appointed regent, said, "If I were a
subject I would certainly revolt. The people are good-natured fools to
suffer so long."

These sufferings and these corruptions were the origin and cause of
the French Revolution.[AA] Napoleon, the great advocate o