The Household of the Lafayettes (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV The Revolution T T was in May, 1789, that Nobles, Clergy, and Commons -- filed in solemn procession to the Church of Saint Louis at Versailles, there to pray together for God's blessing on their work. Lafayette walked in their midst; Talleyrand and the Bishops were there in golden vestments; Mirabeau towered amongst the Tiers Etat; there, too, stepped the philanthropic Dr. Guillotin, who had just completed his report on the Penal Code and his invention for mitigating the horrors of capital punishment He had done signal service to humanity; any Parliament might be proud to reckon him amongst its members. From church they went straight to the famous Salle des Menus, soon to be the stage of the greatest of modern dramas. Gouverneur Morris was not the man to waste such an opportunity. He was there, listening and observing. There is a letter to his wife, written a few days later, when the whole scene still belonged to the present; it gives an account so fresh and so vital that we cannot resist reproducing the whole of it " I had the honour," he says, " to be present on the fifth of this month at the opening of the States-General?a spectacle more solemn to the mind than gaudy to the eye. And yet, there was displayed everything of noble and of royal in this titled country. A great number of fine women, and a very great number of fine dresses ranged round the hall. On a kind of stage, the throne; CF Tt, r UNIVERSITY on the left of the King, and a little below him. the Queen; a little behind him to the right, and on chairs, the Princes of the blood; on the right and left, at some distance from the throne, the various princesses, with the gentlemen and ladies of their retinue. Advanced on the stage, to the left of the throne, the Keeper of the Seals. Several o...