earnestness that I should bring it to him, that I could not refuse. I
brought it to him accordingly, but read it to him I declared I never
would. He took it, therefore, and read it in a low tone, standing in the
window of his little cabinet, where we were. He judged it in reading
much as it was, for he stopped from time to time to speak to me, and
without appearing much moved. But all on a sudden I saw him change
countenance, and turn towards me, tears in his eyes, and himself ready to
drop.

"Ah," said he, "this is too much, this horrible poem beats me
completely."

He was at the part where the scoundrel shows M. le Duc d'Orleans having
the design to poison the King, and quite ready to execute his crime.
It is the part where the author redoubles his energy, his poetry, his
invocations, his terrible and startling beauties, his invectives, his
hideous pictures, his touching portraits of the youth and innocence of
the King, and of the hopes he has, adjuring the nation to save so dear a
victim from the barbarity of a murderer; in a word, all that is most
delicate, most tender, stringent, and blackest, most pompous, and most
moving, is there.

I wished to profit by the dejected silence into which the reading of this
poem had thrown M. le Duc d'Orleans, to take from him the execrable
paper, but I could not succeed; he broke out into just complaints against
such horrible wickedness, and into tenderness for the King; then finished
his reading, that he interrupted more than once to speak to me. I never
saw a man so penetrated, so deeply touched, so overwhelmed with injustice
so enormous and sustained. As for me, I could not contain myself. To
see him, the most prejudiced, if of good faith, would have been convinced