of the
gay metropolis?

One glance toward the centre of the Place de Greve was sufficient to
inform the dullest, for there uprose, black, grisly, horrible, a tall
stout pile of some thirty feet in height, with a huge wheel affixed
horizontally to the summit.

Around this hideous instrument of torture was raised a scaffold hung
with black cloth, and strewed with saw-dust, for the convenience of
the executioners, about three feet lower than the wheel which
surmounted it.

Around this frightful apparatus were drawn up two companies of the
French guard, forming a large hollow-square facing outwards, with
muskets loaded, and bayonets fixed, as if they apprehended an attempt
at rescue, although from the demeanor of the people nothing appeared
at that time to be further from their thoughts than any thing of the
kind.

Above was the executioner-in-chief, with two grim, truculent-looking
assistants, making preparations for the fearful operation they were
about to perform, or leaning indolently on the instruments of
slaughter.

By and bye, as the day wore onward, and the concourse kept still
increasing both in numbers and in the respectability of those who
composed it, something of irritation began to show itself, mingled
with the eagerness and expectation of the populace, and from some
murmurs, which ran from time to time through their ranks, it would
seem that they apprehended the escape of their victim.

By this time the windows of all the houses which overlooked the
precincts of that fatal square on which so much of noble blood has
been shed through so many ages, were occupied by persons of both
sexes, all of the middle, and some even of the upper classes, as eager
to behold the frightful and disgusting scene, which was about to
ensue, as the mere rabble in the open streets below.

The same thing was manifest along the whole line of the thoroughfare
by which the fatal procession would advance, with this difference
alone, that many of the houses in that quarter belonging to the high
nobility, and all with few exceptions being the dwellings of opulent
persons, the windows, instead of being let like seats at the opera, to
any who would pay the price, were occupied by the inhabitants, coming
and going from their ordinary avocations to look out upon the noisy
throng, when any louder outbreak of voices called their attention to
the busy scene.

Among the latter, in a large and splendid mansion, not far from the
Porte S