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nature might give to his assertions, and believed it to be the cast of a
die, whether he should in future ages be reverenced as an inspired delegate
from heaven, or be recognized as an impostor by the present dying
generation. At any rate he resolved to keep up the drama to the last act.
When, on the first approach of summer, the fatal disease again made its
ravages among the followers of Adrian, the impostor exultingly proclaimed
the exemption of his own congregation from the universal calamity. He was
believed; his followers, hitherto shut up in Paris, now came to Versailles.
Mingling with the coward band there assembled, they reviled their admirable
leader, and asserted their own superiority and exemption. At length the
plague, slow-footed, but sure in her noiseless advance, destroyed the
illusion, invading the congregation of the elect, and showering promiscuous
death among them. Their leader endeavoured to conceal this event; he had a
few followers, who, admitted into the arcana of his wickedness, could help
him in the execution of his nefarious designs. Those who sickened were
immediately and quietly withdrawn, the cord and a midnight-grave disposed
of them for ever; while some plausible excuse was given for their absence.
At last a female, whose maternal vigilance subdued even the effects of the
narcotics administered to her, became a witness of their murderous designs
on her only child. Mad with horror, she would have burst among her deluded
fellow-victims, and, wildly shrieking, have awaked the dull ear of night
with the history of the fiend-like crime; when the Impostor, in his last
act of rage and desperation, plunged a poignard in her bosom. Thus wounded
to death, her garments dripping with her own life-blood, bearing her
strangled infant in her arms, beautiful and young as she was, Juliet, (for
it was she) denounced to the host of deceived believers, the wickedness of
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