ABSTRACT
Madame de Sevrac and her companions being in the cabin, escaped the scene of horror which the Marquis was condemned to witness; the vessel ploughed through the waves, and his eyes never quitted the place where de Fleury sunk, till the passengers landed on the quay at Naples. The event was too terrible to be easily effaced from a mind humane and reflecting, like that of de Sevrac; he beheld de Fleury as the victim of despotism; he saw the noblest nature and the bravest heart contaminated by revenge; and all the effects of a virtuous education destroyed by a train of events, entirely originating in experienced oppression. A thousand times he cursed the rash and cruel conduct of Monsieur de Briancour; the subtle villain, who, to keep down a rival in the sphere of power; sacrificed an innocent and helpless family. The scene of present horrors he at last beheld, as the mere effect of past enormities, among which the lettre de cachet was an evil of the greatest magnitude. Reflection told him that the rays of truth, which had been obscured by the intervening glooms of tyranny and superstition, were now collected in one glorious beam, to illumine the whole earth! that if ever time should unfold the pages of secret history, there would be found many de Fleurys and many de Briancours: while the dark volume would prove to the enlightened universe, that religion had been made a plea for the most inhuman sacrifices; avarice, the source of legal prostitution; and pride, the barrier between the virtuous and the exalted, which reason has at last overturned, and nature shudders to remember!
