to think of anything else: a slight pallor was the only symptom of emotion to be seen on his face, and a faint redness of the eyelids showed that he had shed a few tears.

He looked smilingly at the executioner, and apologised for disturbing him so early: 'The prospect of the deep sleep which I am to enjoy through you,' he said, 'has made me selfish. You are the man who decapitated Count de Lally-Tollendal, I think?'

This question was put in an easy and simple way which disconcerted my grandfather; and he could hardly find words to reply.

'You made him suffer outrageously,' added the Chevalier. 'I confess that this is the only feature of death that frightens me. I was always something of a coxcomb, and I cannot reconcile myself to the idea that my poor head, which they said was not altogether ugly, should horrify those who see it.'

Charles Henri answered that M. de Lally's violent agitation rather than the executioner's awkwardness was the cause of the accident. He added that decapitation was a gentleman's punishment, because it was necessary that the patient should show fortitude; and further, that the courage of the sufferer was as indispensable to its proper execution as the dexterity of the headsman. He added that the extraordinary coolness M. de la Barre was displaying while discoursing on what was for others a subject of terror, made him feel confident that his head would suffer no mutilation.

'Well,' said La Barre, I think I can give you satisfaction, but pray be careful;' after which he dismissed him. As Charles Henri Sanson was retiring, an old lady and a monk entered the room. It was Mdme. de Villancour, who came to bid farewell to the one she loved like a son, and who brought with her a confessor.

My grandfather remained at the Hôtel-de-Ville. At eight o'clock the criminal lieutenant arrived, and Charles Henri was struck by the contrast presented by the calm and serene countenance of the victim, and the agitated features of his judge. M. Duval de Soicourt's face was livid, his lips quivered, his eyes had a feverish look; he smiled continually, but his satisfaction was now less real than on the preceding day. It was not difficult to perceive that his conscience was unquiet. He went to and fro, hurried the preparations for departure, and from time to time he heaved deep sighs which betrayed the discomfort of his mind.

At length the cortège started (July 1, 1766). M. de la Barre had on his chest a placard on which the words 'infidel, blasphemer, abominable and execrable sacrilege' were written in large letters. His confessor, a monk of the order of St. Dominique, was on his right; the criminal lieutenant was on the other side. When the Chevalier saw him, a slight contraction was observed on his handsome face; he told my grandfather to stand on his left, and, Charles Henri having obeyed, he said in a loud voice, looking at M. Duval de Soicourt:

'It is better so; between the doctor of the soul and the doctor of the body, what need I fear?'

He was taken before the porch of Saint Wulfranc, where he was to make amende honorable; but he energetically refused to pronounce the usual words of the formula. To confess my guilt,' he cried, 'would be to offend God by a falsehood; I cannot do it.'

When he was on the scaffold, my grandfather noticed that his colour vanished, but he recovered his self-possession in a moment. The monk was quite overpowered. Charles Henri Sanson told his assistants to give him his sword. The Chevalier wished to see it, passed his finger along the edge, and, having made sure that it was of good steel and sharp, he said to the executioner: 'Now, master, strike with a firm hand, for I am not afraid.'

My grandfather looked at the young man, quite surprised.

'But, Monsieur le Chevalier,' he said, 'you must kneel.'

'I cannot; amende honorable. Strike me as I am.'1

I am no criminal. I refused to make

Now

Charles Henri Sanson knew not what to do. then, be quick,' added the Chevalier, in a tone of impatience.

Then occurred a fact singular enough to be recorded here. My grandfather handled his sword with so much.

M. Charles Louandre, of the Revue des Deux Mondes, has, adduced proofs that the Chevalier de la Barre was quite innocent of an offence which, in any case, it was monstrous to punish with death.-N. ED.

vigour and dexterity, that it severed the spine and went through the neck without dislodging the head from the shoulders. It was only when the body fell that it rolled on the boards of the scaffold, to the amazement of the witnesses of this extraordinary feat.

This unprecedented incident has been taken up by chroniclers, and all kinds of stories in prose and in verse have been invented thereon. They are all innaccurate. An unscrupulous writer has even asserted that my grandfather, proud of his success, turned to the crowd and said:

'Was it not a fine blow?'

It is my duty, in justice to my grandfather and to our sinister corporation, to contradict these shameless words, which would have soiled even the lips of a headsman. The executioner who exercises his profession because he likes it, and who admires his talents of destruction, is an absurd fiction. If there are, in history, monsters cruel by instinct and sanguinary by system, they are not to be found in our ranks. I have, of course, known many of my confrères; and if most of them were not, to the same degree as myself, victims of their birth and family traditions, I can nevertheless affirm that none discharged functions so antipathetic to the natural sentiments of men without a feeling of shame.

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CHAPTER XIV.

THE EXECUTIONER AND THE PARLIAMENT.

THE executions which have been described in the preceding chapters have compelled me to set aside for a while the part of these memoirs which relates to the autobiography of my family, and which, according to my plan, should be presented simultaneously with the documents quoted in the course of the present judicial history. I now return to our private matters.

When I interrupted these domestic records, Charles Sanson had just died, and his widow, Marthe Dubut, had obtained for her eldest son, Charles Jean-Baptiste Sanson, aged seven years, the position of his father. Man becomes used to everything, and of this I myself have been a sad proof; but it is from the time of Charles Jean-Baptiste that my family seems to have quite reconciled itself, and to have accepted a kind of identification with the bloody appanage which it already regarded as hereditary. Jean-Baptiste was a child, and he never knew the gloomy feelings of his grandfather, nor his father's melancholy. Prepared for the calling which he was to adopt, he never aspired to a higher one.