William Walton - Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day. Volume 2

"Although he had spoken in a low voice, Damiens had heard him, for he murmured, in a feverish voice: 'Yes, it will soon be night;' and after a pause he added: 'Alas! to-morrow it will be day for them!'

"They raised him up to take him away; he made the motion of a kiss toward the crucifix; he was put into the tumbril, which took its way toward Notre-Dame. Before the porch of the church they endeavored to force him to kneel, but his legs were so broken that he uttered a piercing cry in endeavoring to stoop; he was obliged to pronounce while standing the words which the greffier dictated to him.

"He was replaced in the cart and all returned to the Place de Grève, which was literally full of people belonging to all classes of society. Arrived at the foot of the scaffold, Damiens asked to speak to the commissioners; he was carried to the Hôtel de Ville, there he retracted again the accusation he had made against Gautier, which had been wrung from him by torture, recommended his wife and his children to M. Pasquier, and at five o'clock he was set down again on the Place and they lifted him on the scaffold.

"The braziers in which was burning the sulphur mingled with burning coals were ready; his arm was attached to a bar in such a manner that the wrist extended beyond the outside plank of the platform. The executioner brought up the brazier. Damiens uttered a frightful cry and writhed; then, that movement over, he lifted his head and watched his hand burning without manifesting his pain in any other manner than by the chattering of his teeth. It was one of Sanson's valets, André Legris, who, for the sum of a hundred livres, undertook the tearing with pinchers. He carried his instrument over the arms, over the chest, and over the thighs of the patient, and brought away shreds of flesh; then he poured into the gaping wounds boiling oil, flaming rosin, sulphur fused, or melted lead, with which the other valets supplied him.

"Damiens, mad with pain, his eyes immeasurably out of their orbits, the hair standing on his head, cried, in a voice that made every one tremble: 'More! more!'

"But he was taken down from the platform, the traces of the horses were attached to each one of his limbs. Each horse was held by the bridle by an aid; another was placed behind with a whip in his hand; the executioner, standing on the platform, gave the signal.

"The four horses sprang violently forward, one of them fell, but the body of the unfortunate wretch was not dismembered.

"Three times the horses recommenced their efforts, and three times the resistance of the body made them fall back. Only the arms and legs of the patient, who was still living, were immeasurably elongated.

"The curé had fainted; the executioners no longer knew what to do. The spectators, at first dumb with stupor and fright, now uttered exclamations of horror.

"It was then that the surgeon, Boyer, ascended to the Hôtel de Ville to ask of the commissioners permission to cut the joints; this was at first refused, on the pretext that the longer the execution lasted the more would the criminal suffer, and that this was what was necessary; but the surgeon having affirmed that the tearing asunder could not be effected without aid, it was resolved to permit the necessary amputation.

"But there was no instrument.

"André Legris performed the operation with blows of a hatchet, he cut the arm-pits and the joints of the thighs. The two thighs were first dismembered, then a shoulder, and it was not till after this that the wretched Damiens expired.

"A sigh of relief escaped from all breasts.

"But it was not finished: the four members and the trunk were gathered up and all placed upon the pile of fagots, and the flames arose. The execution of Damiens had lasted an hour and a quarter....

"It was observed, when they picked up the body of Damiens to throw it on the pyre, that his hair, which was brown when he arrived on the Place de Grève, had become white as snow."

The judgment rendered by the Parlement in the famous case of the diamond necklace, in the following reign, was received with very different emotions by the court and the people. It may be remembered that the Bishop of Strasbourg, Cardinal de Rohan, a member of one of the most arrogant families of the nobility, anxious to regain the favor of the Queen Marie Antoinette, had fallen into the snares of a clever adventuress, Jeanne de Saint-Remy de Valois, Comtesse de la Motte. The latter was aware that the crown-jewelers, MM. Bœhmer and Bassenge, had offered the queen a necklace of diamonds for the price of one million six hundred thousand livres, but that she had declined it, saying that the money would be better applied in the purchase of a vessel of war. Madame de la Motte proceeded to open fictitious negotiations with the jewelers in the name of the queen, pretending that the latter had changed her mind but did not wish the affair to become public, that the purchase would be made by instalments and through the hands of a great seigneur of the court. This was the Cardinal Rohan, upon whom she imposed, by means of forged letters from the queen, skilfully prepared by her secretary, one Sieur Rétaux de Villette. She even arranged a brief nocturnal interview in the gardens of Versailles for him, as related in the last chapter, with a demoiselle from the Palais-Royal disguised as Marie-Antoinette. A few days later, the cardinal remitted to the comtesse the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand livres on a pretended letter; but when she proposed to him, later, to purchase the necklace himself on the strength of the queen's promise to indemnify him, he had so many doubts that he went to consult the adventurer Cagliostro, then in great favor in Paris. The magician pronounced favorably upon the enterprise; in January, 1785, the cardinal received the jewels from the merchants in return for a paper signed and sealed by him but bearing on the margin the words: " Approuvé , Marie-Antoinette de France " in which it was agreed that they were to be paid for in four instalments of four hundred thousand livres each, the first payment to be made on the 1st of August following. The queens of France were never in the habit of adding anything to the signature of their Christian names. On the first of February the cardinal delivered the necklace in a casket, in the apartments of Madame de la Motte at Versailles, to an assumed valet in the royal livery, whom he thought he recognized, but who was no other than the crafty Rétaux de Villette. The stones were immediately separated, the comtesse kept the small ones for herself and sold the larger ones in England. Naturally, the affair came to light a few months later, and on the 15th of August the cardinal was lodged in the Bastille.

Great was the excitement; the Papacy even interfered to prevent the trial of so eminent a churchman by the Parlement, before whom the king brought the procès in the following month, but the latter maintained its rights, and on the 31st of May, 1786, pronounced judgment. M. de la Motte (who had escaped to England) was condemned to the galleys for life; his wife, to be publicly flogged, branded on both shoulders with the letter "V," a rope around her neck, and imprisoned for life; Rétaux de Villette banished for life, without branding or flogging; the demoiselle D'Olivia discharged; Cagliostro and the cardinal discharged from all accusation. The acquittal of the prelate was hailed with applause by the people, and viewed with great displeasure by the court and the nobility; the blow to the royal prestige was felt to be very serious, the publicity given to the fact that a cardinal, Grand Almoner to the Court, had mistaken a courtesan for the Queen of France was recognized as most unfortunate. Louis XVI banished him to his abbey of the Chaise-Dieu in Auvergne, ordered him to resign his post of Grand Aumônier de France, and to return his order of the Saint-Esprit.