take place. The executioner was the Abbe de
Cinq-Pierres, for Gavroche is as logical as he is ingenious. Well! the
abbey exists no longer, swept clean away from the front of the Roquette
prison. This is splendid! and as for the guillotine itself, you know
what has been done with that. Oh! we had a narrow escape! Would you
believe that that infamous, that abominable Government of Versailles,
conceived the idea, at the time it sat in Paris, of having a new and
exquisitely improved guillotine, constructed by anonymous carpenters? It
is exactly as I have the honour of telling you. You can easily verify
the fact by reading the proclamation of the "_sous-comite en exercice._"
What is the "active under-committee?" I admit that I am in total
ignorance on the subject; but, what does it matter! In these times when
committees spring up like mushrooms, it would be absurd to allow oneself
to be astonished at a committee--and especially a sub-committee--more or
less. Here is the proclamation:--

"CITIZENS,--Being informed that a guillotine is at this moment in course
of construction,..." Dear me, yes, while you were fast asleep and
dreaming, with no other apprehension than that of being sent to prison
by the members of the Commune, a guillotine was being made. Happily, the
sub-committee was not asleep. No, not they! "... a guillotine ordered
and paid for ...". Are you quite sure it was paid for, good
sub-committee? For that Government, you know, had such a habit of
cheating poor people out of their rights. "... by the late odious
government; a portable and rapid guillotine." Ha! What do you say to
that? Does not that make your blood run cold? Rapid, you understand;
that is to say, that the guillotining of twelve or fifteen hundred
patriots in a morning would have been play to the Abbe of Cinq-Pierres.
And portable, too! A sort of pocket guillotine. When the members of the
Government had a circuit to make in the provinces, they would have
carried their guillotine with their seals of office, and if, at Lyons,
Marseilles, or any other great town, they had met a certain number of
scoundrels--Snip, snap! In the twinkling of an eye, no more scoundrels
left. Oh! how cunning! But let us go on reading. "The sub-committee of
the eleventh arrondissement ..." Oh! so there is a sub-committee for
each arrondisement, is there? "... has had these infamous instruments of
monarchical domination ..." One for you, Monsieur Thiers! "... seized,
and has v