“frizzled, powdered, in a gold-laced coat, pumps, and

white silk stockings.” At the gallows and the wheelthe axe was a

rarityMonsieur Paris, as it was the episcopal mode among his

brother Professors of the provinces, Monsieur Orleans, and the

rest, to call him, presided in this dainty dress. And who among the

company at Monseigneur’s reception in that seventeen hundred

and eightieth year of Our Lord, could possibly doubt, that a system

rooted in a frizzled hangman, powdered, gold-laced, pumped, and

white-silk stockinged, would see the very stars out!

Monseigneur having eased his four men of their burdens and

taken his chocolate, caused the doors of the Holiest of Holiests to

be thrown open, and issued forth. Then, what submission, what

cringing and fawning, what servility, what abject humiliation! As

to bowing down in body and spirit, nothing in that way was left for

Heavenwhich may have been one among other reasons why the

worshippers of Monseigneur never troubled it.

Bestowing a word of promise here and a smile there, a whisper

on one happy slave and wave of the hand on another,

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Monseigneur affably passed through his rooms to the remote

region of the Circumference of Truth. There, Monseigneur turned,

and came back again, and so in due course of time got himself shut

up in his sanctuary by