The trials invariably wound up
with the execution of the condemned, who were laid at full length on a
bed, the neck underneath a plank. The scene then shifted to the infernal
regions. The most agile of the troop, wrapped in white sheets, played
spectres. There was a young _avocat_ from Bordeaux, a man named Dubosc,
short, dark, one-eyed, humpbacked, bandy-legged, the very black deuce in
person, who used to come all horned and hoofed, to drag the Pere
Longuemare feet first out of his bed, announcing to the culprit that he
was condemned to the everlasting flames of hell and doomed past
redemption for having made of the Creator of the Universe a jealous
being, a blockhead, and a bully, an enemy of human happiness and love.

"Ah! ha! ha!" the devil would scream discordantly, "so you taught, you
old bonze, that God delights to see His creatures languish in contrition
and deny themselves His dearest gifts. Impostor, hypocrite, sneak, sit
on nails and eat egg-shells for all eternity!"

The Pere Longuemare, for all reply, would observe that the speech showed
the philosopher's cloven hoof behind the devil's and that the meanest
imp of hell would never have talked such foolishness, having at least
rubbed shoulders with Theology and for certain being less ignorant than
an Encyclopaedist.

But when the Girondist _avocat_ called him a Capuchin, he turned scarlet
with anger and declared that a man incapable of distinguishing a
Barnabite from a Franciscan was too blind to see a fly in milk.

The Revolutionary Tribunal was always draining the prisons, which the
Committees were as unceasingly replenishing; in three months the chamber
of the eighteen was half full of new faces. The Pere Longuemare lost his
tormentor. The _avocat_ Dubosc was haled before the Revolutionary
Tribunal and condemned to death as a Federalist and for having conspired
against the unity of the Republic. On leaving the court, he returned, as
the prisoners always did, by a corridor that ran through the prison and
opened on the room he had enlivened for three months with his gaiety.
As he made his farewells to his companions, he maintained the same light
tone and cheerful air that were habitual with him.

"Forgive me, sir," he said to the Pere Longuemare, "for having hauled
you feet foremost from your bed. I will never do it again."

Then, turning to old Brotteaux:

"Good-bye, I go before you into the land of nowhere. I gladly return to
Nature the atoms of my