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Rh still Queen in her own household. It only behoves us, by some sign of coldness, to show that we resent the indignity of having our palace made a slaughter-house.'"

"Settled with his Majesty's usual sense of the royal dignity—wonderful in such a youth!" said an officer of the household; one of those elderly courtiers, whose whole life had been an adulation.

But Francesca, unaccustomed from her childhood to the ideal reverence with which the royal person and power were then regarded in France, could think of the ex-Queen's act as a murder only, not as a judgment. Was it possible, then, that such, an offence against the laws of humanity—a human being's life sacrificed with such vindictive cruelty—that this crime against nature and womanhood, was held as light in the balance when weighed with a want of respect to one of the royal residences! Well, custom is a surprising thing: and when we think how, from earliest infancy, we are surrounded by false impressions, undue rights, privileges, and prejudices, we may well marvel that there is such a thing as truth in the world. That it should be concealed, is far less wonderful than that it should ever be discovered. After all, the great error in human judgment is not so much wilful perversion, as that we judge according to