of the
guillotine, except the few rare individuals who had a special pass.

A sudden murmur ran through the crowd. The mounted police, stationed
opposite the guillotine, had just drawn their sabres. Fandor gripped
Juve's hand nervously. The detective was very pale.

"Let us get over there," he said, and led Fandor just behind the
guillotine, to the side where the severed head would fall into the
basket. "We shall see the poor devil get out of the carriage, and being
fastened on to the bascule, and pulled into the lunette." He went on
talking as if to divert his own mind from the thing before him. "That's
the best place for seeing things: I stood there when Peugnez was
guillotined, a long time ago now, and I was there again in 1909 when
Duchemin, the parricide, was executed."

But he came to an abrupt stop. From the great door of the Sante prison a
carriage came rapidly out. All heads were uncovered, all eyes were
fixed, and a deep silence fell upon the crowded boulevard.

The carriage passed the journalist and the detective at a gallop and
pulled up with a jerk just opposite them, on the other side of the
guillotine, and at the very foot of the scaffold. M. Deibler jumped down
from the box, and opening the door at the back of the vehicle let down
the steps. Pale and nervous, the chaplain got out backwards, hiding the
scaffold from the eyes of the condemned man, whom the assistants managed
somehow to help out of the carriage.

Fandor was shaking with nervousness and muttering to himself.

But things moved quickly now.

The chaplain, still walking backwards, hid the dread vision for yet a
few seconds more, then stepped aside abruptly. The assistants seized the
condemned man, and pushed him on to the bascule.

Juve was watching the unhappy wretch, and could not restrain a word of
admiration.

"That man is a brave man! He has not even turned pale! Generally
condemned men are livid!"

The executioner's assistants had bound the man upon the plank; it tilted
upwards. Deibler grasped the head by the two ears and pulled it into the
lunette, despite one last convulsive struggle of the victim.

There was a click of a spring, the flash of the falling knife, a spurt
of blood, a dull groan from ten thousand breasts, and the head rolled
into the basket!

But Juve had flung Fandor aside and sprang towards the scaffold. He
thrust the assistants away, and plunging his hands into the bran that
was all soaked with blood, he