the large open space which was kept clear. And on thus emerging from the
tumultuous throng they were quite impressed by the death-like silence and
solitude which reigned under the little plane-trees. The night was now
paling. A faint gleam of dawn was already falling from the sky.

After leading his companions slantwise across the square, Massot stopped
them near the prison and resumed: "I'm going inside; I want to see the
prisoner roused and got ready. In the meantime, walk about here; nobody
will say anything to you. Besides, I'll come back to you in a moment."

A hundred people or so, journalists and other privileged spectators, were
scattered about the dark square. Movable wooden barriers--such as are set
up at the doors of theatres when there is a press of people waiting for
admission--had been placed on either side of the pavement running from
the prison gate to the guillotine; and some sightseers were already
leaning over these barriers, in order to secure a close view of the
condemned man as he passed by. Others were walking slowly to and fro, and
conversing in undertones. The brothers, for their part, approached the
guillotine.

It stood there under the branches of the trees, amidst the delicate
greenery of the fresh leaves of spring. A neighbouring gas-lamp, whose
light was turning yellow in the rising dawn, cast vague gleams upon it.
The work of fixing it in position--work performed as quietly as could be,
so that the only sound was the occasional thud of a mallet--had just been
finished; and the headsman's "valets" or assistants, in frock-coats and
tall silk hats, were waiting and strolling about in a patient way. But
the instrument itself, how base and shameful it looked, squatting on the
ground like some filthy beast, disgusted with the work it had to
accomplish! What! those few beams lying on the ground, and those others
barely nine feet high which rose from it, keeping the knife in position,
constituted the machine which avenged Society, the instrument which gave
a warning to evil-doers! Where was the big scaffold painted a bright red
and reached by a stairway of ten steps, the scaffold which raised high
bloody arms over the eager multitude, so that everybody might behold the
punishment of the law in all its horror! The beast had now been felled to
the ground, where it simply looked ignoble, crafty and cowardly. If on
the one hand there was no majesty in the manner in which human justice
condemned a m