achine. Surely, if needful, it is also frightful this
Machine; dead, blind; not what it should be; which, with swift stroke,
or by cold slow torture, has wasted the lives and souls of innumerable
men. And behold now a King himself, or say rather Kinghood in his
person, is to expire here in cruel tortures;--like a Phalaris shut in
the belly of his own red-heated Brazen Bull! It is ever so; and thou
shouldst know it, O haughty tyrannous man: injustice breeds injustice;
curses and falsehoods do verily 'return always home,' wide as they
may wander. Innocent Louis bears the sins of many generations: he too
experiences that man's tribunal is not in this Earth; that if he had no
Higher one, it were not well with him.

A King dying by such violence appeals impressively to the imagination;
as the like must do, and ought to do. And yet at bottom it is not the
King dying, but the Man! Kingship is a coat; the grand loss is of the
skin. The man from whom you take his Life, to him can the whole combined
world do more? Lally went on his hurdle, his mouth filled with a gag.
Miserablest mortals, doomed for picking pockets, have a whole five-act
Tragedy in them, in that dumb pain, as they go to the gallows,
unregarded; they consume the cup of trembling down to the lees. For
Kings and for Beggars, for the justly doomed and the unjustly, it is
a hard thing to die. Pity them all: thy utmost pity with all aids and
appliances and throne-and-scaffold contrasts, how far short is it of the
thing pitied!

A Confessor has come; Abbe Edgeworth, of Irish extraction, whom the King
knew by good report, has come promptly on this solemn mission. Leave
the Earth alone, then, thou hapless King; it with its malice will go
its way, thou also canst go thine. A hard scene yet remains: the parting
with our loved ones. Kind hearts, environed in the same grim peril with
us; to be left here! Let the Reader look with the eyes of Valet Clery,
through these glass-doors, where also the Municipality watches; and see
the cruellest of scenes:

'At half-past eight, the door of the ante-room opened: the Queen
appeared first, leading her Son by the hand; then Madame Royale and
Madame Elizabeth: they all flung themselves into the arms of the King.
Silence reigned for some minutes; interrupted only by sobs. The Queen
made a movement to lead his Majesty towards the inner room, where M.
Edgeworth was waiting unknown to them: "No," said the King, "let us go
into the dining-r