Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. V, No. XXIX., October, 1852Various
Religion
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. V, No. XXIX., October, 1852
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Civilization -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals
But the child threw her arms around his knees, and with her eyes
suffused with tears, and agony depicted in every feature of her
beautiful upturned face, exclaimed, "Pardon! pardon! pardon! it is for
my father!"
"And who is your father?" said Napoleon, kindly. "Who are you?"
"I am Miss Lajolais," she replied, "and my father is doomed to die."
Napoleon hesitated for a moment; and then exclaimed, "Ah, miss, but
this is the second time in which your father has conspired against the
state. I can do nothing for you!"
"Alas, sire!" the poor child exclaimed, with great simplicity, "I know
it: but the first time, papa was innocent; and to-day I do not ask for
justice--I implore pardon, pardon for him!"
Napoleon was deeply moved. His lip trembled, tears filled his eyes,
and, taking the little hand of the child in both of his own, he
tenderly pressed it, and said:
"Well, my child! yes! For your sake, I will forgive your father. This
is enough. Now rise and leave me."
At these words the suppliant fainted, and fell lifeless upon the floor.
She was conveyed to the apartment of Josephine, where she soon revived,
and, though in a state of extreme exhaustion, proceeded immediately
to Paris. M. Lavalette, then aid-de-camp of Napoleon, and his wife,
accompanied her to the prison of the Conciergerie, with the joyful
tidings. When she arrived in the gloomy cell where her father was
immured, she threw herself upon his neck, and her convulsive sobbings,
for a time, stifled all possible powers of utterance. Suddenly,
her frame became convulsed, her eyes fixed, and she fell in entire
unconsciousness into the arms of Madame Lavalette. When she revived,
reason had fled, and the affectionate daughter was a hopeless maniac!
Napoleon, in the evening, was informed of this new calamity. He dropped
his head in silence, mused painfully, brushed a tear from his eye,
and was heard to murmur, in a low tone of voice, "Poor child! poor
child!--a father who has such a daughter is still more culpable. I will
take care of her and of her mother."
Six others of the conspirators also soon received a pardon. Such was
the termination of the Bourbon conspiracy for the assassination of
Napoleon.
"WHO MURDERED DOWNIE?"
About the end of the eighteenth century, whenever any student of the
Marischal College, Aberdeen, incurred the displeasure of the humbler
citizens, he was assailed with the question, "Who murdered Downie?"
Reply and rejoinder generally brought on a collision between "town
and gown;" although the young gentlemen were accused of what was
chronologically impossible. People have a right to be angry at being
stigmatized as murderers, when their accusers have probability on their
side; but the "taking off" of Downie occurred when the gownsmen, so
maligned, were in swaddling clothes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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