oted their destruction for ever." Very good intentions,
sub-committee, but you can't write grammar. "In consequence, they will
be burnt in front of the _mairie_, for the purification of the
arrondissement and the preservation of the new liberties." And
accordingly, a guillotine was burnt on the 7th of April, at ten o'clock
in the morning, before the statue of Voltaire.

The ceremony was not without a certain weirdness. In the midst of a
compact crowd of men, women, and children, who shook their fists at the
odious instrument, some National Guards of the 187th Battalion fed the
huge flames with broken pieces of the guillotine, which crackled,
blistered, and blazed, while the statue of the old philosopher, wrapped
in the smoke, must have sniffed the incense with delight. When nothing
remained but a heap of glowing ashes, the crowd shouted with joy; and
for my own part, I fully approved of what had just been done as well as
of the approbation of the spectators. But, between you and me, do you
not think that many of the persons there had often stationed themselves
around the guillotine with rather different intentions than that of
seeing it burnt? And then, if in reducing this instrument of death to
ashes, they wished to prove that the time is past when men put men to
death, it seems to me that they ought not to stop at this. While we are
at it, let us burn the muskets too,--what say you?

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 53: The citizens, united under the denomination of the League
of Republican Union of the Rights of Paris, had adopted the following
programme, which seemed to them to express the wishes of the
population:--

"Recognition of the Republic.

"Recognition of the rights of Paris to govern itself, to regulate
its police, its finances, its public charities, its public instruction,
and the exercise of its religious liberty by a council freely elected
and all-powerful within the scope of its action.

"The protection of Paris exclusively confided to the National Guard,
formed of all citizens fit to serve.

"It is to the defence of this programme that the members of the League
wish to devote their efforts, and they appeal to all citizens to aid
them in the work, by making known their adhesion, so that the members of
the League, thereby strengthened and supported, may exercise a powerful
mediatory influence, tending to bring about the return of peace, and to
secure the maintenance of the Republic.

"Paris, 6th April, 1