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Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas père
page 8 of 1287 (00%)
to that of the Duc de Beaufort and the Prince de Conde -- in
other words, of the two men who were considered the bravest
in France -- had been attacked in his turn. The people
threatened to hold him responsible for the evils that hung
over them. But the chief president had replied with his
habitual coolness, without betraying either disturbance or
surprise, that should the agitators refuse obedience to the
king's wishes he would have gallows erected in the public
squares and proceed at once to hang the most active among
them. To which the others had responded that they would be
glad to see the gallows erected; they would serve for the
hanging of those detestable judges who purchased favor at
court at the price of the people's misery.

Nor was this all. On the eleventh the queen in going to mass
at Notre Dame, as she always did on Saturdays, was followed
by more than two hundred women demanding justice. These poor
creatures had no bad intentions. They wished only to be
allowed to fall on their knees before their sovereign, and
that they might move her to compassion; but they were
prevented by the royal guard and the queen proceeded on her
way, haughtily disdainful of their entreaties.

At length parliament was convoked; the authority of the king
was to be maintained.

One day -- it was the morning of the day my story begins --
the king, Louis XIV., then ten years of age, went in state,
under pretext of returning thanks for his recovery from the
small-pox, to Notre Dame. He took the opportunity of calling
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