The Imperial ambassador was not in waiting, but they found
for Austria a good Judean representation. With great judgment, his
Highness, the Grand Duke, had sent the most atheistic coxcomb to be
found in Florence, to represent at the bar of impiety the House of
Apostolic Majesty, and the descendants of the pious, though high-minded,
Maria Theresa. He was sent to humble the whole race of Austria before
those grim assassins, reeking with the blood of the daughter of Maria
Theresa, whom they sent half dead, in a dung-cart, to a cruel execution;
and this true-born son of apostasy and infidelity, this renegado from
the faith and from all honor and all humanity, drove an Austrian coach
over the stones which were yet wet with her blood,--with that blood
which dropped every step through her tumbrel, all the way she was drawn
from the horrid prison, in which they had finished all the cruelty and
horrors not executed in the face of the sun. The Hungarian subjects of
Maria Theresa, when they drew their swords to defend her rights against
France, called her, with correctness of truth, though not with the same
correctness, perhaps, of grammar, a king: "_Moriamur pro rege nostro,
Maria Theresa.
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