The Mysteries of London, v. 2/4

by George W. M. Reynolds

"ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION OF LOUIS XV.,

OF FRANCE.

"In the year 1757, one Francis Damien, an unhappy wretch, whose sullen mind, naturally unsettled, was inflamed by the disputes between the King and his Parliament concerning religion, formed the desperate resolution of attempting the life of his Sovereign. In the dusk of the evening, as the King prepared to enter his coach, he was suddenly, though slightly, wounded, with a pen-knife, between the fourth and fifth ribs, in the presence of his son, and in the midst of his guards. The daring assassin had mingled with the crowd of courtiers, but was instantly betrayed by his distracted countenance. He declared it was never his intention to kill the King: but that he only meant to wound him, that God might touch his heart, and incline him to restore the tranquillity of his dominions by re-establishing the Parliament, and banishing the Archbishop of Paris, whom he regarded as the source of the present commotions. In these frantic and incoherent declarations he persisted, amidst the most exquisite tortures; and after human ingenuity had been exhausted in devising new modes of torment, his judges, tired out with his obstinacy, consigned him to a death, the inhumanity of which might fill the hearts of savages with horror: he was conducted to the common place of execution, amidst a vast concourse of the populace; stripped naked, and fastened to the scaffold by iron manacles. One of his hands was then burnt in liquid flaming sulphur; his thighs, legs, and arms, were torn with red hot pincers: boiling oil, melted lead, resin, and sulphur, were poured into the wounds; and, to complete the terrific catastrophe, he was torn to pieces by horses!"

"And they call him an unhappy wretch!" exclaimed Holford, pushing the book from him: "no—no! He must have had a great and a powerful mind to have dared to attempt to kill a King! And his name is remembered in history! Ah! that thought must have consoled him in the midst of those infernal torments. What is more delightful than the conviction of emerging from vile obscurity, and creating a reputation—although one so tarnished and disfigured that the world shrinks from it with loathing? Yes:—better to be a Turpin or a Barrington—a Claude du Val or a Jack Sheppard, than live unknown, and die without exciting a sensation. But it would be glorious—oh! how glorious to be ranked with Ankarstrom, Ravaillac, Damien, Felton, Guy Fawkes, Fieschi, and that gallant few who have either slain, or attempted the lives of, monarchs or great men! I am miserable,—poor,—obscure,—and without a hope of rising by legitimate means. I have seen the inside of a palace—and am doomed to drag on my wretched existence in this garret. I have partaken of the dainties that came from the table of a sovereign—and, were I hungry now, a sorry crust is all that my cupboard would afford. I have listened to the musical voice of that high-born lady whose name I scarcely dare to breathe even to myself—and now the cold blast of February comes with its hoarse sound to grate upon my ears in this miserable—miserable garret! Oh! why was my destiny cast in so lowly a sphere? What has been my almost constant occupation—with some few brighter intervals—since I was twelve years old? A pot-boy—a low, degraded pot-boy: the servant of servants—the slave of slaves—forced to come and go at the beck and call of the veriest street-sweeper that frequented the tap-room! Ah! my God—when I think of all this humiliation, I feel that my blood boils even up to my very brain—my eyes and cheeks appear to be upon fire—I seem as if my senses were leaving me!"

And, as he spoke, he clenched his fists and ground his teeth together with a ferocious bitterness, which indicated the fearfully morbid condition of his mind.

For he was enraged against fortune who had made him poor and humble—against the world for keeping him so—and against royalty and aristocracy for being so much happier and so incomparably more blessed than the section of society to which he belonged.

And in his vanity—for his soaring disposition made him vain—he conceived that he possessed elements of greatness, which the world, with a wilful blindness, would not see; or which adverse circumstances would not suffer to develop themselves.

He deemed himself more persecuted than others moving in the same sphere: his restless, diseased, and excited mind, had conjured up a thousand evils to which he thought himself the marked—the special prey.

He had seen, in his visits to the palace, so much of the highest eminence of luxury, pleasure, happiness, and indolent enjoyment, that he looked around with horror and affright when he found himself hurled back again into the lowest depths of obscurity, privation, and cheerlessness of life.

He had at intervals feasted his eyes so greedily with all the fascination, the glitter, the gorgeousness, the splendour, the ease, and the voluptuousness, of the Court, that he could not endure the contemplation of the fearful contrast which was afforded by the every-day and familiar scenes of starvation, penury, misery, and ineffectual toil that marked the existence of the people.