him that he could ask the Enemy no question, but

immediately fled; so, Monseigneur, after boldly reading the Lord’s

Prayer backwards for a great number of years, and performing

many other potent spells for compelling the Evil One, no sooner

beheld him in his terrors than he took to his noble heels.

The shining Bull’s Eye of the Court was gone, or it would have

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

been the mark for a hurricane of national bullets. It had never

been a good eye to see withhad long had the mote in it of

Lucifer’s pride, Sardanapalus’s luxury, and a mole’s blindness

but it had dropped out and was gone. The Court, from that

exclusive inner circle to its outermost rotten ring of intrigue,

corruption, and dissimulation, was all gone together. Royalty was

gone; had been besieged in its Palace and ‘suspended,’ when the

last tidings came over.

The August of the year one thousand seven hundred and

ninety-two was come, and Monseigneur was by this time scattered

far and wide.

As was natural, the headquarters and great gathering-place of

Monseigneur, in London, was Tellson’s Bank. Spirits are

supposed to haunt the places where their bodies most resorted,

and Monseigneur without a guinea haunted the spot where his

guineas used to be. Moreover, it was the spot to which such

French intelligence as was most to be relied up