Chapter 2 - Page 2

showing the places where the destroyed bas reliefs
had been. Scarcely could a remnant of the entablature
still be distinguished at the summit of the
pedestal, and beneath the cornice a string of ovolos,
defaced and worn, was surmounted by what architects call
a "chaplet of paternosters." On the table of the
pedestal one could perceive a heap of debris of all kinds,
in which tufts of grass were growing here and there. This
pile of nameless things had replaced the royal statue.

The scaffold was raised a few steps distant from this
ruin, a little in rear of it. It was covered with long
planks, laid transversely, that masked the framework. A
ladder without banisters or balustrade was at the back, and
what they venture to call the head of this horrible
construction was turned towards the Garde-Meuble. A
basket of cylindrical shape, covered with leather, was
placed at the spot where the head of the King was to fall,
to receive it; and at one of the angles of the entablature,
to the right of the ladder, could be discerned a long wicker
basket prepared for the body, and on which one of the
executioners, while waiting for the King, had laid his hat.

Imagine, now, in the middle of the Place, these two
lugubrious things, a few paces from each other: the
pedestal of Louis XV. and the scaffold of Louis XVI.; that is
to say, the ruins of royalty dead and the martyrdom of
royalty living; around these two things four formidable
lines of armed men, preserving a great empty square in
the midst of an immense crowd; to the left of the scaffold,
the Champs-Elysees, to the right the Tuileries, which,
neglected and left at the mercy of the public had become
an unsightly waste of dirt heaps and trenches; and
over these melancholy edifices, over these black, leafless
trees, over this gloomy multitude, the bleak, sombre sky
of a winter morning, and one will have an idea of the
aspect which the Place de la Revolution presented at the
moment when Louis XVI., in the carriage of the Mayor
of Paris, dressed in white, the Book of Psalms clasped in
his hands, arrived there to die at a few minutes after ten
o'clock on January 21, 1793.

Strange excess of abasement and misery: the son of so
many kings, bound and sacred like the kings of Egypt,
was to be consumed between two layers of quicklime,
and to this French royalty, which at Versailles had
had a throne of gold and at St. Denis sixty sarcophagi
of granite, there remained but a platform of pine and a
wicker coffin.

Here are some unknown details. The executioners numbered
four; two only performed the execution; the third
stayed at the foot of the ladder, and the fourth was on the
waggon which was to convey the