THE KEY OF THE MYSTERIES
launched the State upon a fatal slope. From that moment all
the crimes of the Revolution weighed upon him alone; he
alone had failed in his duty. Robespierre and Marat only did
what they had to do. Girondins and Montagnards killed each
other in the workings of fatality, and their violent deaths were
so many necessary catastrophes; at that epoch there was but
one great and legitimate execution, really sacred, really expia-
tory: that of the King. The principle of royalty would have
fallen if that too weak prince had escaped. But a transaction
between order and disorder was impossible. One does not
inherit from those whom one murders; one robs them; and
the Revolution rehabilitated Louis XVI by assassinating him.
After so many concessions, so many weaknesses, so many un-
worthy abasements, that man, consecrated a second time by
misfortune, was able at least to say, as he walked to the
scaffold: ‘The Revolution is condemned, and I am always
the King of France”!
To be just is to suffer for all those who are not just, but
it is life: to be wicked is to suffer for one’s self without
winning life; it is to deceive one’s self, to do evil, and to
win eternal death.
To recapitulate: Fatal influences are those of death.
Living influences are those of life. According as we are
weaker or stronger in life, we attract or repel witchcraft.
This occult power is only too real, but intelligence and
virtue will always find the means to avoid its obsessions and
its attacks.
255