Accordingly, following to the spot a guard of soldiers appointed to
assist at the execution, I disengaged myself as soon as possible from
the pressure of the immense crowd already assembled, and obtained a seat
at the window of a house immediately opposite the Hotel-de-Ville, in
front of the principal entrance to which the guillotine had been
erected. At the hour of twelve at noon precisely, the malefactor, tall,
athletic, and young, having his hands tied behind his back, and being
stripped to the waist, was brought to the square in a cart, under an
escort of gen-d'armes, attended by an elderly and respectable
ecclesiastic; who, having been previously occupied in administering the
consolations of religion to the condemned person in prison, now appeared
incessantly employed in tranquillizing him on his way to the scaffold.
Arrived near the fatal machine, the unhappy man stepped out of the
vehicle, knelt at the feet of his confessor, received the priestly
benediction, kissed some individuals who accompanied him, and was
hurried by the officers of justice up the steps of the cube-form
structure of wood, painted of a blood-red, on which stood the dreadful
apparatus of death. To reach the top of the platform, to be fast bound
to a board, to be placed horizontally under the axe, and deprived of
life by its unerring blow, was, in the case of this miserable offender,
the work literally of a moment.
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