Tea at Trianon: A Still Small Voice

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, September 9, 2013

A Still Small Voice

From Dawn Eden:

Have you seen how the entire world all but disappears for a split second at the consecration of the Host at Mass? It happens very quickly, and if you blink you will miss it. Everything in the created universe is revealed to be hanging as though suspended, as though the fabric of reality were as fragile as a bubble dangling from a leaf. The only thing that is fully real, fully true, fully grounded, is the elevated Host and the words pouring from the priest’s lips that telescope time and space to the Last Supper. (Read more.)

tubbs said...: I feel so tied-in at that moment. I always think of my ancestors and of all my family. I pray for all of them at that mystical moment, that Time removed from Time.; September 9, 2013 at 1:07:00 PM EDT