'Attention!' was among
the foot-soldiers instantly.
They were marched up to the scaffold
and formed round it. The dragoons galloped to their nearer
stations too. The guillotine became the centre of a wood of
bristling bayonets and shining sabres. The people closed round
nearer, on the flank of the soldiery. A long straggling stream of
men and boys, who had accompanied the procession from the prison,
came pouring into the open space. The bald spot was scarcely
distinguishable from the rest. The cigar and pastry-merchants
resigned all thoughts of business, for the moment, and abandoning
themselves wholly to pleasure, got good situations in the crowd.
The perspective ended, now, in a troop of dragoons. And the
corpulent officer, sword in hand, looked hard at a church close to
him, which he could see, but we, the crowd, could not.
After a short delay, some monks were seen approaching to the
scaffold from this church; and above their heads, coming on slowly
and gloomily, the effigy of Christ upon the cross, canopied with
black. This was carried round the foot of the scaffold, to the
front, and turned towards the criminal, that he might see it to the
last. It was hardly in its place, when he appeared on the
platform, bare-footed; his hands bound; and with the collar and
neck of his shirt cut away, almost to the shoulder. A young man--
six-and-twenty--vigorously made, and well-shaped.
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