rowded with men and women. All
classes of Parisians were there,--the _blouses_, or workingmen, standing
first in number; the students from the Latin Quartier being well
represented, and idlers, and well-dressed nondescripts without
enumeration,--distributing themselves among women, dogs, and babies.

Venders of _gateaux_, muscles, and fruit were out in force. The "Savage
of Paris," clothed in his war plumes, paint, greaves, armlets, and
moccasins, was selling razors by gaslight; here and there ballad-mongers
were singing the latest songs, and boys, with chairs to let, elbowed
into the intricacies of the crowd, which amused itself all the night
long by smoking, drinking, and hallooing. At last, the mass became
formidable in numbers, covering every inch of ground within sight of the
prison, and many soldiers and _sergeants de ville_, mounted and on foot,
pushed through the dense mass to restore order.

At midnight, a body of cavalry forced back the people from the square of
La Roquette. A number of workmen, issuing from the prison-gates,
proceeded to set up the instrument of death by the light of blazing
torches. The flame lit up the dark jail walls, and shone on the helmets
and cuirasses of the sabre-men, and flared upon spots of the upturned
faces, now bringing them into strong, ruddy relief, now plunging them
into shadow. When the several pieces had been framed together, we had a
real guillotine in view,--the same spectre at which thousands of good
and bad men had shuddered; and the folks around it, peering up so
eagerly, were descendants of those who stood on the _Place de la
Concorde_ to witness the head of a king roll into the common basket.
Imagine two tall, straight timbers, a foot apart, rising fifteen feet
from the ground. They are grooved, and spring from a wide platform,
approached by a flight of steps. At the base, rests a spring-plank or
_bascule_, to which leather thongs are attached to buckle down the
victim, and a basket or _pannier_ filled with sawdust to receive the
severed head. Between these, at their summit, hangs the shining knife in
its appointed grooves, and a cord, which may be disconnected by a jerk,
holds it to its position. Two men will be required to work the
instrument promptly,--the one to bind the condemned, the other to drop
the axe. The _bascule_ is so arranged that the whole weight and length
of the trunk will rest upon it, leaving the head and neck free, and when
prone it will reach t