ation that each Saturday bore along, to
carry me to the Place de Greve. It was the great day of the guillotine,
and as many as two hundred were often led out to execution. Although the
spectacle had now lost every charm of excitement to the population, from
its frequency, it had become a kind of necessity to their existence,
and the sight of blood alone seemed to slake that feverish thirst for
vengeance which no sufferings appeared capable of satiating. It was
rare, however, when some great and distinguished criminal did not absorb
all the interest of the scene. It was at that period when the fierce
tyrants of the Convention had turned upon each other, and sought, by
denouncing those who had been their bosom friends, to seal their new
allegiance to the people. There was something demoniacal in the
exultation with which the mob witnessed the fate of those whom, but a
few weeks back, they had acknowledged as their guides and teachers. The
uncertainty of human greatness appeared the most glorious recompense to
those whose station debarred them from all the enjoyments of power, and
they stood by the death-agonies of their former friends with a fiendish
joy that all the sufferings of their enemies had never yielded.

To me the spectacle had all the fascination that scenes of horror
exercise over the mind of youth. I knew nothing of the terrible
conflict, nothing of the fierce passions enlisted in the struggle,
nothing of the sacred names so basely polluted, nothing of that
remorseless vengeance with which the low born and degraded were still
hounded on to slaughter. It was a solemn and a fearful sight, but it
was no more; and I gazed upon every detail of the scene with an interest
that never wandered from the spot whereon it was enacted. If the
parade of soldiers, of horse, foot, and artillery, gave these scenes
a character of public justice, the horrible mobs, who chanted ribald
songs, and danced around the guillotine, suggested the notion of popular
vengeance; so that I was lost in all my attempts to reconcile the
reasons of these executions with the circumstances that accompanied
them.

Not daring to inform the Pere Michel of where I had been, I could not
ask him for any explanation; and thus was I left to pick up from the
scattered phrases of the crowd what was the guilt alleged against the
criminals. In many cases the simple word 'Chouan,' of which I knew not
the import, was all I heard; in others, jeering allusions to