[68] Madame de Staël, and Madame de Montmorin, wife of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, beheld from a gallery the spectacle. The former exulted in the boundless prospect of national felicity which seemed to be opening under the auspices of her father. "You are wrong to rejoice," said Madame de Montmorin; "this event forebodes much misery to France and to ourselves." Her presentiment was but too well founded. She herself perished on the scaffold with one of her sons; her husband was murdered on September 2d; her eldest daughter died in the hospital of a prison, and her youngest died of a broken heart.--See M. DE STAËL, vol. i., p. 187. [69] Lacretelle, tom. i., p. 32; Rivarol, p. 37. [70] It was, for example, gravely stated, that a seigneur of a certain province possessed a feudal right to put two of his vassals to death upon his return from hunting, and to rip their bellies open, and plunge his feet into their entrails to warm them.--S. [71] See Don Quixote, part ii., chap. lxi., (vol. v., p. 296. Lond., 1822.) [72] "By a majority of 491 to 90."--LACRETELLE. [73] Lacretelle, tom. vii., p. 39. [74] Lacretelle, tom. vii., p. 41. [75] The government monopoly of salt, under the name of the _gabelle_, was maintained over about two-thirds of the kingdom. [76] Mignet, tom. i., p. 43. [77] "The evening before, he had tendered his resignation, which was not accepted, as the measures adopted by the court were not such as he thoroughly approved."--LACRETELLE, tom. vii., p. 47. [78] Mounier was born at Grenoble in 1758. He quitted France in 1790, but returned in 1802. He afterwards became one of Napoleon's counsellors of state in 1806. [79] Malouet was born at Riom in 1740. To escape the massacres of September, 1790, he fled to England; but returned to France in 1801, and, in 1810, was appointed one of Napoleon's counsellors of state. He died in 1814. [80] "Abstract science will not enable a man to become a ship-wright. The French are perhaps the worst ship-wrights in all Europe, but they are confessedly among the first and best theorists in naval architecture, and it is one of those unaccountable phenomena in the history of man, that they never attempted to combine the two. Happily the English have hit upon that expedient."--BARROW.