THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS
only a last resort: it is simple; nevertheless, I believe that it is just and efficacious. This is it:
The king has refused his sanction to your resolution upon the religious troubles.[1] I do not know whether the somber spirit of the Medicis and the Cardinal de Lorraine still wanders beneath the arches of the palace of the Tuileries; if the sanguinary hypocrisy of the Jesuits La Chaise and Le Tellier lives again in the soul of some monster burning to see a revival of Saint Bartholomew and the Dragonades; I do not know whether the king's heart is disturbed by the fantastic ideas suggested to him and his conscience disordered by the religious terrors with which he is environed.
But it is not possible to believe, without wronging him and accusing him of being the most dangerous enemy of the Revolution, that he wishes to encourage, by impunity, the criminal attempts of pontifical ambition, and to give to the proud agents of the tiara the disastrous power with which they have equally oppressed peoples and kings. It is not possible to believe, without wronging him and accusing him of being the enemy of the people, that he approves or even looks with indifference on the underhanded schemes employed to divide the citizens, to cast the leaven of hatred into the bosoms of sensitive souls, and to stifle in the name of the Divinity the sweetest sentiments of which He has com-
- ↑ The king vetoed a measure against priests who refused to swear to the Constitution of 1790.
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