o the grooves, leaving space for the knife to pass
below it. The knife itself is short and wide, with a bright concave
edge, and a rim of heavy steel ridges it at the top; it moves easily in
the greased grooves, and may weigh forty pounds. It has a terrible
fascination, hanging so high and so lightly in the blaze of the torches,
which play and glitter upon it, and cast stains of red light along its
keen blade, as if by their brilliance all its past blood-marks had
become visible again. A child may send it shimmering and crashing to the
scaffold, but only God can fasten together the warm and throbbing parts
which it shall soon dissever. And now that the terrible creature has
been recreated, the workmen slink away, as if afraid of it, and a body
of soldiers stand guard upon it, as if they fear that it might grow
thirsty and insatiate as in the days of its youth. The multitude press
up again, reinforced every hour, and at last the pale day climbs over
the jail-walls, and waiting people see each other by its glimmer. The
bells of Notre Dame peal out; a hundred towers fall into the march of
the music; the early journals are shrieked by French newsboys, and folks
begin to count the minutes on their watches. There are men on the ground
who saw the first guillotine at work. They describe the click of the
cleaver, the steady march of victims upon the scaffold-stairs, the
rattle of the death-cart turning out of the _Rue Saint Honore_, the
painted executioners, with their dripping hands, wiping away the jets of
blood from the hard, rough faces; nay! the step of the young queen,
white-haired with care, but very beautiful, who bent her body as she had
never bent her knee, and paid the penalty of her pride with the neck
which a king had fondled.

At four minutes to six o'clock on Thursday morning, the wicket in the
prison-gate swung open; the condemned appeared, with his hands tied
behind his back, and his knees bound together. He walked with
difficulty, so fettered; but other than the artificial restraints, there
was no hesitation nor terror in his movements. His hair, which had been
long, dark, and wavy, was severed close to his scalp; his beard had
likewise been clipped, and the fine moustache and goatee, which had set
off his most interesting face, no longer appeared to enhance his
romantic, expressive physiognomy. Yet his black eyes and cleanly cut
mouth, nostrils, and eyebrows, demonstrated that Couty de la Pommerais
was not a