Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 12, No. 30, September, 1873

Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 12, No. 30, September, 1873

As I parted from my stout old friend Joliet, I saw him turn to empty the last half of our bottle into the glasses of a couple of tired soldiers who were sucking their pipes on a bench. And again the old proverb of Aretino came into my head: "Truly all courtesy and good manners come from taverns." I grasped my botany-box and pursued my promenade toward Noisy. The village of Noisy has made (without a pun) some noise in history. One of its ancient lords, Enguerrand de Marigny, was the inventor of the famous gibbet of Montfauon, and in the poetic justice which should ever govern such cases he came to be hung on his own gallows. He was convicted of manifold extortions, and launched by the common executioner into that eternity whither he could carry none of his ill-gotten gains with him. Here, at least, we succeed in meeting a guillotine which catches its maker. By a singular coincidence another lord of Noisy, Cardinal Balue, underwent a long detention in an iron-barred cageone of those famous cages, so much favored by Louis XI., of which the cardinal, as we learn from the records of the time, had the patent-right for invention, or at least improvement. Once firmly engaged in his own torturewhile his friend Haraucourt, bishop of Verdun, experienced alike penalty in [pg 250] a similar box, and the foxy old king paced his narrow oratory in the Bastile tower overheadwe may be sure that Balue gave his inventive mind no more to the task of fortifying his cages, but rather to that of opening them. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 14036
Author: Various
Release Date: Nov 13, 2004
Format: eBook
Language: English