illed; and I make no doubt that the organs of destructiveness must
begin to throb and swell as we witness the delightful savage spectacle.

Three or four years back, when Fieschi and Lacenaire were executed, I
made attempts to see the execution of both; but was disappointed in
both cases. In the first instance, the day for Fieschi's death was,
purposely, kept secret; and he was, if I remember rightly, executed at
some remote quarter of the town. But it would have done a philanthropist
good, to witness the scene which we saw on the morning when his
execution did NOT take place.

It was carnival time, and the rumor had pretty generally been carried
abroad that he was to die on that morning. A friend, who accompanied
me, came many miles, through the mud and dark, in order to be in at the
death. We set out before light, floundering through the muddy Champs
Elysees; where, besides, were many other persons floundering, and all
bent upon the same errand. We passed by the Concert of Musard, then held
in the Rue St. Honore; and round this, in the wet, a number of coaches
were collected. The ball was just up, and a crowd of people in hideous
masquerade, drunk, tired, dirty, dressed in horrible old frippery, and
daubed with filthy rouge, were trooping out of the place: tipsy women
and men, shrieking, jabbering, gesticulating, as French will do; parties
swaggering, staggering forwards, arm in arm, reeling to and fro across
the street, and yelling songs in chorus: hundreds of these were bound
for the show, and we thought ourselves lucky in finding a vehicle to the
execution place, at the Barriere d'Enfer. As we crossed the river and
entered the Enfer Street, crowds of students, black workmen, and more
drunken devils from more carnival balls, were filling it; and on the
grand place there were thousands of these assembled, looking out for
Fiaschi and his cortege. We waited and waited; but alas! no fun for
us that morning: no throat-cutting; no august spectacle of satisfied
justice; and the eager spectators were obliged to return, disappointed
of their expected breakfast of blood. It would have been a fine scene,
that execution, could it but have taken place in the midst of the mad
mountebanks and tipsy strumpets who had flocked so far to witness it,
wishing to wind up the delights of their carnival by a bonnebouche of a
murder.

The other attempt was equally unfortunate. We arrived too late on the
ground to be present at the executi