[484] Brennus, the leader of the Senonian Gauls who overran Italy and captured Rome, about 390 B.C., laid siege to the Capitol for six months, until bought off by the garrison with 1,000 pounds of gold. According to a later legend, when the gold was being weighed, a Roman tribune remonstrated against the use of false weights by the Gauls. Brennus threw his sword into the scale with the famous exclamation, Væ victis!—T.
[485] This pamphlet was published on the 29th of December 1832.—B.
[486] The Duchesse de Berry was betrayed by Simon Deutz, a converted Jew, to Thiers, for a sum variously named as 500,000 and 100,000 francs. She was discovered in hiding, with her confidants, behind the movable slab or plate of a chimney, in which a fire had been lighted by the gendarmes.—T.
[487] Luke, XXII., 3.—T.
[488] St. Laurence (d. 258) was martyred by being roasted alive in an iron chair or on a gridiron in Rome. The Church honours him on the 10th of August.—T.
[489] Lucius Septimus Severus, Roman Emperor (146-211). He became Emperor in 193; his persecution of the Christians was decreed in 201. Severus died in Britain, at York.—T.
[490] This is the text of the declaration, which was inserted in the Moniteur of the 26th of February 1833:
"Driven by circumstances and by the measures ordered by the Government, although I had the gravest reasons to keep my marriage secret, I think it my duty to myself, as well as to my children, to declare that I was secretly married during my residence in Italy.
"Marie-Caroline.
"At the Citadel of Blaye, 22 February 1833."—B.
[491] Chateaubriand appeared before the Assize Court of the Seine on the 27th of February 1833. With him were prosecuted the editors of the Quotidienne, the Gazette de France, the Revenant, the Écho français, the Mode, the Courrier de l'Europe and a young student, M. Victor Thomas, who had, on the 4th of January, acted as spokesman for 1,200 young men who had gone to make a display of their enthusiasm to Chateaubriand and who had repeated with him:
"Madame, your son is my King!"