Volume VI Part 38 (1/2)

She laughed, and told me I was mistaken as it was only a copy

”Impossible!”

She called her husband, who caer, and said to him,--

”You are athan an engraving You ought to ood stead; but be careful, or it may cost you your life”

The next day the couple left Aix In ten years I saw therini

At the present period he is in a prison which he will probably never leave, and his wife is happy, maybe, in a convent

CHAPTER X

My Departure--Letter froano--Madath, I went to take leave of the Marquis d'Argens and his brother I dined with the not to observe the presence of the Jesuit, and I then spent three delightful hours in conversation with the learned and aens

He toldanecdotes about the private life of Frederick II No doubt the reader would like to have they to set them down Perhaps some other day when the mists about Dux have dispersed, and some rays of the sun shi+ne in upon me, I shall commit all these anecdotes to paper, but now I have not the courage to do so

Frederick had his good and his bad qualities, like all great s has been hteenth century

The King of Sweden, who has been assassinated, loved to excite hatred that heit to do its worst He was a despot at heart, and he caht have foreseen a violent death, for throughout his life he was always provoking men to the point of despair There can be no coenshi the whole nuraphy which he had written in his youth, and which he had afterwards suppressed

”Why so?” I asked

”Because I was foolish enough to write the truth Never give way to this tein on this plan you are not only compelled to record all your vices and follies, but to treat them in the severe tone of a philosophical historian You ood you e All the evil you say of yourself will be held for gospel, your peccadilloes will be ood deeds will not only be received with incredulity, but you will be taxed with pride and vanity for having recorded them Besides, if you write your in to tell the truth A man should neither talk of himself nor write of himself, unless it be to refute some calumny or libel”

I was convinced, and prouilty of such a folly, but in spite of that I have been writing h I repent of having begun, I have sworn to go on to the end

However, I write in the hope that ht of day; in the first place the censure would not allow the-h, when my last illness comes, to have all my papers burnt before ence of my readers, who should re reeables which I have to bear day by day from the envious rascals who live with me in this castle of Count Waldstein, or Wallenstein, at Dux

I write ten or twelve hours a day, and so keep black melancholy at bay

My readers shall hear s later on, if I do not die before I write them down

The day after Corpus Christi I left Aix for Marseilles But here I otten; I mean the procession of Corpus Christi

Everyone knows that this festival is celebrated with great ceremony all over Christendom; but at Aix these ceremonies are of such a nature that every man of sense must be shocked at my recital

It is well known that this procession in honour of the Being of beings, represented under the sacraious confraternities, and this is duly done at Aix; but the scandalous part of the ceremony is the folly and the buffoonery which is allowed in a rite which should be designed to stir up the hearts of men to awe and reverence their Creator

Instead of that, the devil, death, and the seven deadly sins, are impersonated in the procession They are clad in theand abusing each other in their supposed vexation at having to join in the Creator's praises

The people hoot and hiss thes in derision of them, and play them all manner of tricks, and the whole scene is one of incredible noise, uproar, and confusion, an bacchanalia than a procession of Christian people All the country-folk froues around Aix pour into the town on that day to do honour to God It is the only occasion of the kind, and the clergy, either knavish or ignorant, encourage all this shaood faith, and anyone who raised any objection would run sooes in front of the saturnalia, and consequently it is all holy

I expresseddiscredit on religion, to a councillor of parliaravely that it was an excellent thing, as it brought no less than a hundred thousand francs into the town on the single day