Wert thou a fabulous Griffin, devouring the works of men; daily dragging virgins to thy cave;--clad also in scales that no spear would pierce: no spear but Death's?
A Griffin not fabulous but real! Frightful, O Louis, seem these moments for thee .-- We will pry no further into the horrors of a sinner's death-bed.
And yet let no meanest man lay flattering unction to his soul.

Louis was a Ruler; but art not thou also one?
His wide France, look at it from the Fixed Stars (themselves not yet Infinitude), is no wider than thy narrow brickfield, where thou too didst faithfully, or didst unfaithfully.

Man, 'Symbol of Eternity imprisoned into 'Time!' it is not thy works, which are all mortal, infinitely little, and the greatest no greater than the least, but only the Spirit thou workest in, that can have worth or continuance.
But reflect, in any case, what a life-problem this of poor Louis, when he rose as Bien-Aime from that Metz sick-bed, really was! What son of Adam could have swayed such incoherences into coherence?
Could he?
Blindest Fortune alone has cast him on the top of it: he swims there; can as little sway it as the drift-log sways the wind-tossed moon-stirred Atlantic.

"What have I done to be so loved ?" he said then.
He may say now: What have I done to be so hated?
Thou hast done nothing, poor Louis! Thy fault is properly even this, that thou didst nothing.
What could poor Louis do?
Abdicate, and wash his hands of it,--in favour of the first that would accept! Other clear wisdom there was none for him.

As it was, he stood gazing dubiously, the absurdest mortal extant (a very Solecism Incarnate), into the absurdest confused world;--wherein at lost nothing seemed so certain as that he, the incarnate Solecism, had five senses; that were Flying Tables (Tables Volantes, which vanish through the floor, to come back reloaded).