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Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions — Volume 1 by Charles Mackay
page 30 of 314 (09%)
and alleging that he was insane. The Regent avoided them as long as
possible, being determined that, in a case so atrocious, justice
should take its course; but the importunity of these influential
suitors was not to be overcome so silently, and they at last forced
themselves into the presence of the Regent, and prayed him to save
their house the shame of a public execution. They hinted that the
Princes d'Horn were allied to the illustrious family of Orleans, and
added that the Regent himself would be disgraced if a kinsman of his
should die by the hands of a common executioner. The Regent, to his
credit, was proof against all their solicitations, and replied to
their last argument in the words of Corneille,-
"Le crime fait la honte, et non pas l'echafaud:"
adding, that whatever shame there might be in the punishment he would
very willingly share with the other relatives. Day after day they
renewed their entreaties, but always with the same result. At last
they thought that if they could interest the Duke de St. Simon in
their layout, a man for whom the Regent felt sincere esteem, they
might succeed in their object. The Duke, a thorough aristocrat, was as
shocked as they were, that a noble assassin should die by the same
death as a plebeian felon, and represented to the Regent the impolicy
of making enemies of so numerous, wealthy, and powerful a family. He
urged, too, that in Germany, where the family of D'Aremberg had large
possessions, it was the law, that no relative of a person broken on
the wheel could succeed to any public office or employ until a whole
generation had passed away. For this reason he thought the punishment
of the guilty Count might be transmuted into beheading, which was
considered all over Europe as much less infamous. The Regent was moved
by this argument, and was about to consent, when Law, who felt
peculiarly interested in the fate of the murdered man, confirmed him
in his former resolution, to let the law take its course.
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