rs no Belief is possible. Unhappy! Nay,
as yet the Contradiction of a Lie is some kind of Belief; but the Lie
with its Contradiction once swept away, what will remain? The five
unsatiated Senses will remain, the sixth insatiable Sense (of vanity);
the whole daemonic nature of man will remain,--hurled forth to rage
blindly without rule or rein; savage itself, yet with all the tools and
weapons of civilisation; a spectacle new in History.

In such a France, as in a Powder-tower, where fire unquenched and now
unquenchable is smoking and smouldering all round, has Louis XV. lain
down to die. With Pompadourism and Dubarryism, his Fleur-de-lis has been
shamefully struck down in all lands and on all seas; Poverty invades
even the Royal Exchequer, and Tax-farming can squeeze out no more;
there is a quarrel of twenty-five years' standing with the Parlement;
everywhere Want, Dishonesty, Unbelief, and hotbrained Sciolists for
state-physicians: it is a portentous hour.

Such things can the eye of History see in this sick-room of King Louis,
which were invisible to the Courtiers there. It is twenty years, gone
Christmas-day, since Lord Chesterfield, summing up what he had noted of
this same France, wrote, and sent off by post, the following words, that
have become memorable: 'In short, all the symptoms which I have ever
met with in History, previous to great Changes and Revolutions in
government, now exist and daily increase in France.' (Chesterfield's
Letters: December 25th, 1753.)

Chapter 1.1.III.

Viaticum.

For the present, however, the grand question with the Governors of
France is: Shall extreme unction, or other ghostly viaticum (to Louis,
not to France), be administered?

It is a deep question. For, if administered, if so much as spoken of,
must not, on the very threshold of the business, Witch Dubarry vanish;
hardly to return should Louis even recover? With her vanishes Duke
d'Aiguillon and Company, and all their Armida-Palace, as was said;
Chaos swallows the whole again, and there is left nothing but a smell
of brimstone. But then, on the other hand, what will the Dauphinists and
Choiseulists say? Nay what may the royal martyr himself say, should he
happen to get deadly worse, without getting delirious? For the present,
he still kisses the Dubarry hand; so we, from the ante-room, can note:
but afterwards? Doctors' bulletins may run as they are ordered, but
it is 'confluent small-pox,'--of which, as is whispered