the armed troop;
faithful to his orders, Black Henriot leads them on. Tramp! tramp!
over the craven and scattered crowd! Here, flying in disorder,--there,
trampled in the mire, the shrieking rescuers! And amidst them, stricken
by the sabres of the guard, her long hair blood-bedabbled, lies the
Italian woman; and still upon her writhing lips sits joy, as they
murmur, "Clarence! I have not destroyed thee!"

On to the Barriere du Trone. It frowns dark in the air,--the giant
instrument of murder! One after one to the glaive,--another and another
and another! Mercy! O mercy! Is the bridge between the sun and the
shades so brief,--brief as a sigh? There, there,--HIS turn has come.
"Die not yet; leave me not behind; hear me--hear me!" shrieked the
inspired sleeper. "What! and thou smilest still!" They smiled,--those
pale lips,--and WITH the smile, the place of doom, the headsman, the
horror vanished. With that smile, all space seemed suffused in eternal
sunshine. Up from the earth he rose; he hovered over her,--a thing not
of matter, an IDEA of joy and light! Behind, Heaven opened, deep after
deep; and the Hosts of Beauty were seen, rank upon rank, afar; and
"Welcome!" in a myriad melodies, broke from your choral multitude, ye
People of the Skies,--"welcome! O purified by sacrifice, and immortal
only through the grave,--this it is to die." And radiant amidst the
radiant, the IMAGE stretched forth its arms, and murmured to the
sleeper: "Companion of Eternity!--THIS it is to die!"

....

"Ho! wherefore do they make us signs from the house-tops? Wherefore
gather the crowds through the street? Why sounds the bell? Why shrieks
the tocsin? Hark to the guns!--the armed clash! Fellow-captives, is
there hope for us at last?"

So gasp out the prisoners, each to each. Day wanes--evening closes;
still they press their white faces to the bars, and still from window
and from house-top they see the smiles of friends,--the waving signals!
"Hurrah!" at last,--"Hurrah! Robespierre is fallen! The Reign of Terror
is no more! God hath permitted us to live!"

Yes; cast thine eyes into the hall where the tyrant and his conclave
hearkened to the roar without! Fulfilling the prophecy of Dumas,
Henriot, drunk with blood and alcohol, reels within, and chucks his gory
sabre on the floor. "All is lost!"

"Wretch! thy cowardice hath destroyed us!" yelled the fierce Coffinhal,
as he hurled the coward from the window.

Calm as despair stands the st