he site.]

There, on Wednesday, 16th January 1793, began the solemn judgment of
Louis XVI. by 721 representatives of the people of France. The sitting
opened at ten o'clock in the morning, but not till eight in the
evening did the procession of deputies begin, as the roll was called,
to ascend the tribune, and utter their word of doom. All that long
winter's night, and all the ensuing short winter's day, the fate of a
king trembled in the balance, as the judgment: death--banishment:
banishment--death, with awful alternation echoed through the hall.
Amid the speeches of the deputies was heard the chatter of fashionable
women in the boxes, pricking with pins on cards the votes for and
against death, and eating ices and oranges brought to them by friendly
deputies. Above, in the public tribunes, sat women of the people,
greeting the words of the deputies with coarse gibes. Betting went on
outside. At every entrance, cries, hoarse and shrill, were heard of
hawkers selling "The Trial of Charles I." Time-serving Philip Egalite,
Duke of Orleans, voted _la mort_, but failed to save his skin. An
Englishman was there--Thomas Paine, author of the _Rights of Man_ and
deputy for Calais. His voice was raised for clemency, for temporary
detention, and banishment after the peace. "My vote is that of Paine,"
cried a member, "his authority is final for me." One deputy was
carried from a sick-bed to cast his vote in the scale of mercy; others
slumbering on the benches were awakened and gave their votes of death
between two yawns. At length, by eight o'clock on the evening of the
17th, exactly twenty-four hours after the voting began, the President
rose to read the result. A most august and terrible silence reigned in
the Assembly as President Vergniaud rose and pronounced the sentence
"Death" in the name of the French nation. The details of the voting as
given in the _Journal de Perlet_, 18th January 1793, are as follows:
"Of the 745 members one had died, six were sick, two absent without
cause, eleven absent on commission, four abstained from voting. The
absolute majority was therefore 361. Three hundred and sixty-six voted
for death, three hundred and nineteen for detention and banishment,
two for the galleys, twenty-four for death with various reservations,
eight for death with stay of execution until after the peace, two for
delay with power of commutation." Three Protestant ministers and
eighteen Catholic priests voted for death. Lou