the most splendid throne of the universe, and Louis alone in the tower
of the Temple or on the scaffold. But there is a class of men who
received the news of the late execution with much more heartfelt sorrow
than that which you, among such a multitude, so officiously express. The
passion of pity is one of which, above all others, a Christian teacher
should be cautious of cherishing the abuse when, under the influence of
reason, it is regulated by the disproportion of the pain suffered to the
guilt incurred. It is from the passion thus directed that the men of
whom I have just spoken are afflicted by the catastrophe of the fallen
monarch. They are sorry that the prejudice and weakness of mankind have
made it necessary to force an individual into an unnatural situation,
which requires more than human talents and human virtues, and at the
same time precludes him from attaining even a moderate knowledge of
common life, and from feeling a particular share in the interests of
mankind. But, above all, these men lament that any combination of
circumstances should have rendered it necessary or advisable to veil for
a moment the statues of the laws, and that by such emergency the cause
of twenty-five millions of people, I may say of the whole human race,
should have been so materially injured. Any other sorrow for the death
of Louis is irrational and weak.

[15] M. Gregoire.

In France royalty is no more. The person of the last anointed is no more
also; and I flatter myself I am not alone, even in this _kingdom_, when
I wish that it may please the Almighty neither by the hands of His
priests nor His nobles (I allude to a striking passage of Racine) to
raise his posterity to the rank of his ancestors, and reillume the torch
of extinguished David.[16]