whirlwind charges and harassing flank attacks that drove back
Brunswick's legions, they were now quartered on well-deserved furlough
within the city.

The old lion of Danton's nature woke again, his indomitable spirit
reasserted itself whenever he went to their yard and roused them by
his patriotic eloquence.

Alas! within the tribunal and on the execution place at the other side
of the city, was that going on which shamed patriotism and mocked
liberty.

"La Guillotine"--that fiendish beheading instrument that a deputy
named Doctor Guillotin had devised--was become Robespierre's private
engine to tyrannize France.

It stood in a great suburban place, on a scaffolding led up to by a
flight of steps: a tall massive upright with high cross piece--uglier
than the gallows. A brightly gleaming, triangular knife, about the
size of a ploughshare, worked up and down in the channels.

The knife was first raised to the top of the upright, and held there
by a lever. The master of the ceremonial raised right hand in token to
the executioners to be ready.

As he dropped his hand in a down-sweeping gesture, one of these
villains pulled the rope which released the lever. Down fell the heavy
knife across the neck opening of a body board to which the victim was
strapped. Below the contraption was a huge basket.

A cordon of soldiery guarded the place, keeping back the crowds. The
brawny executioners--naked to the waist, like butchers in a
stockyard--daily performed their office.

On this day of Henriette and Maurice's sentence, they were giving it a
preliminary trial. "The trigger's been slipping--not working well,"
the head fellow explained to the master of ceremonies. Back and forth
the terrible guillotine knife hissed and whistled until they
pronounced its action perfect....

Danton and three of his friends had an errand at the Government that
day that took them past the death chamber. A little frightened face
amongst the condemned drew his notice.

"Killing aristocrats, yes!" he was thinking. "But these poor huddled
folk are not the public foe. Would I might summon the legions to put
an end to slaughter--but that Robespierre has inflamed all France with
the lust of blood!"

He was startled from the reflection by the woe-begone, distrait little
thing who seemed hypnotized by terror. The tall man bent down and
peered at the girl.

Like the other condemned, her hands had just been pinioned behind her.
She stood forlor