Chapter 2

RECOUNTED BY EYE-WITNESSES

I. THE EXECUTION OF LOUIS XVI.

There were certain characteristic details connected with
the execution of Louis XVI. that are not recorded in history.
They were recounted to me by an eye-witness* and
are here published for the first time.

* This eye witness was one Leboucher, who arrived in Paris from
Bourges in December, 1792, and was present at the execution of Louis
XVI. In 1840 he recounted to Victor Hugo most of these details
which, as can easily be imagined, had impressed themselves deeply
upon his mind.

The scaffold was not, as is generally believed, erected
in the very centre of the Place, on the spot where the
obelisk now stands, but on a spot which the decree of
the Provisional Executive Council designates in these
precise terms: "between the pied d'estal and the
Champs-Elysées."

What was this pedestal? Present generations who
have seen so many things happen, so many statues crumble
and so many pedestals overthrown do not quite know what
meaning to give to this very vague designation, and would
be embarrassed to tell for what monument the mysterious
stone which the Executive Council of the Revolution
laconically calls the "pied d'estal" served as a base. This
stone had borne the statue of Louis XV.

Let it be noted ~en passant~ that this strange Place which
had been called successively the Place Louis XV., Place
de la Revolution, Place de la Concorde, Place Louis XVI.,
Place du Garde-Meuble and Place des Champs-Elysées,
and which could not retain any name, could not keep any
monument either. It has had the statue of Louis XV.,
which disappeared; an expiatory fountain which was to
have laved the bloody centre of the Place was projected,
but not even the first stone was laid; a rough model of a
monument to the Charter was made: we have never seen
anything but the socle of this monument. Just when a
bronze figure representing the Charter of 1814 was about
to be erected, the Revolution of July arrived with the
Charter of 1830. The pedestal of Louis XVIII. vanished,
as fell the pedestal of Louis XV. Now on this
same spot we have placed the obelisk of Sesostris. It
required thirty centuries for the great Desert to engulf half
of it; how many years will the Place de la Revolution
require to swallow it up altogether?

In the Year II of the Republic, what the Executive
Council called the "pied d'estal" was nought but a
shapeless and hideous block. It was a sort of sinister symbol
of the royalty itself. Its ornaments of marble and bronze
had been wrenched off, the bare stone was everywhere split
and cracked. On the four sides were large square gaps