- At
the other end of Paris, in the east, in the tower of the Temple,
separated from his sister and torn from his mother, still lives the
little Dauphin: no one in France merits more pity or respect than him.
For, if France exists, it is owing to the thirty-five military chiefs
and crowned kings of which he is the last direct scion; without their
thousand years of hereditary rule and preserving policy the intruders
into the Tuileries who have just profaned their tombs at St. Denis
and thrown their bones into a common ditch,[153] would not be
Frenchmen. At this moment, were suffrages free, the immense majority
of the people, nineteen Frenchmen out of twenty, would recognize this
innocent and precious child for their King, the heir of the people of
which their nation and country is formed, a child of eight years, of
rare precociousness, as intelligent as he is good, and of a gentle and
winning expression. Look at the other figure alongside of him, his
fist raised and with insults on his lips, with a hang-dog face,
bloated with brandy, titular governor, official preceptor, and
absolute master of this child, the cobbler Simon, malignant, foul-
mouthed, mean in every way, forcing him to become intoxicated,
starving him, preventing him from sleeping, thrashing him, and who,
obeying orders, instinctively visits on him all his brutality and
corruption that he may pervert, degrade and deprave him.
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