to this department, and Andre
Dumont is recalled; so that we are hourly menaced with the presence of a
monster, compared to whom our own representative is amiable.--

* I have already noticed the cruel and ferocious temper of Le Bon,
and the massacres of his tribunals are already well known. I will
only add some circumstances which not only may be considered as
characteristic of this tyrant, but of the times--and I fear I may
add of the people, who suffered and even applauded them. They are
selected from many others not susceptible of being described in
language fit for an English reader.

As he was one day enjoying his customary amusement of superintending
an execution, where several had already suffered, one of the victims
having, from a very natural emotion, averted his eyes while he
placed his body in the posture required, the executioner perceived
it, and going to the sack which contained the heads of those just
sacrificed, took one out, and with the most horrible imprecations
obliged the unhappy wretch to kiss it: yet Le Bon not only
permitted, but sanctioned this, by dining daily with the hangman.
He was afterwards reproached with this familiarity in the
Convention, but defended himself by saying, "A similar act of
Lequinio's was inserted by your orders in the bulletin with
'honourable mention;' and your decrees have invariably consecrated
the principles on which I acted." They all felt for a moment the
dominion of conscience, and were silent.--On another occasion he
suspended an execution, while the savages he kept in pay threw dirt
on the prisoners, and even got on the scaffold and insulted them
previous to their suffering.

When any of his colleagues passed through Arras, he always proposed
their joining with him in a _"partie de Guillotine,"_ and the
executions were perpetrated on a small square at Arras, rather than
the great one, that he, his wife, and relations might more
commodiously enjoy the spectacle from the balcony of the theatre,
where they took their coffee, attended by a band of music, which
played while this human butchery lasted.

The following circumstance, though something less horrid, yet
sufficiently so to excite the indignation of feeling people,
happened to some friends of my own.--They had been brought with many