Certain it is, that, notwithstanding every effort on the part of the youth to keep himself in the good graces of his obdurate parent, and to uphold his suit with the companion of his childhood, the pretty Hélène, at the same time, he was one day ignominiously expelled from his father's home -it is said for having incontinently broached some of his philosophical ideas concerning that political liberty and equality which has been so long the ignis fatuus of France. Jean Louis Louschart, rudely expelled from the parental roof, was received in the house of Lecointre, a linendraper, and who afterwards attained no small notoriety on the breaking out of the Revolution. As to Master Mathurin, no sooner was the son ejected than he publicly announced, to the astonishment of his friends and neighbours, who were well aware of the long-existing attachment of Jean Louis and Hélène Verdier, that he was going to marry the latter young person himself.

The feelings of the youth, under the circumstances, may be more readily imagined than described. Driven from the paternal roof, deprived of all prospects of inheriting from a parent reputed wealthy, severed even from the business, the reported marriage of his father to the object of his early and constant affections came as the culmination of his misfortunes. He sought, as a last resource, an interview with Madame Verdier; but that coarse woman soon let him know what her intentions were, nor would she allow an interview between the two young people to take place. That which would naturally be expected to occur under such circumstances took place, and the lovers, unable to meet legitimately, did so clandestinely; but it is said that so great was Jean Louis's respect for his father, that he actually urged the girl to resign herself to an evil which was as abhorrent to her as to himself.

It was with this view that he is said to have re-conducted her to the paternal home. Unfortunately, the old farrier and the petulant virago were there to receive them. A scene occurred, into the details of which it is unnecessary to enter here. The girl was smote down by her mother, notwithstanding the young man's loud protestations of her innocence, and the father, stimulated by the revengeful mother, lifted his great hammer against his son. The latter was obliged, in order to save his life, to disarm his parent; the old man fell in the struggle, while the son, making good his escape at the same moment by the door, cast the horrid weapon from him, behind. Master Mathurin happened to be raising his head at the moment, and he received the heavy mass of iron on his right brow, fell back again, and never spoke another word.

When Jean Louis was arrested the next morning, he was more surprised than any one else, for he had never dreamed of even hurting a hair of that parent, whom Madame Vernier was now prepared to swear she had seen him slay in cold blood. When he at length mastered the bearing of the fearful crime with which he stood accused, "Do people kill their father?" was his simple exclamation.

In presence of the evidence of Madame Verdier, that she had seen the son smite his father with her own eyes, no escape remained, however, for the youth. He was condemned on the 31st of July, 1788, to be publicly broken on the wheel, his body to be afterwards burnt, and his ashes cast to the winds.

Charles Henry Sanson was engaged to carry out these melancholy

behests of the law, and to transfer the necessary apparatus from Paris. He arrived there on the 2nd of August, and was surprised at finding the Place Saint Louis so encumbered with an excited populace, that it was with the greatest difficulty that his workmen could proceed with the erection of the scaffold. These demonstrations led to the further erection of a palisade round the scaffold, as also to the demand for a small force of soldiers to assist the gendarmerie in case of tumult or disorder the ensuing day-the one fixed for the execution. The latter was also fixed for an early hour-half-past four in the morning-in the hopes that all would be over before the mob would be abroad.

The authorities were, however, labouring under a misconception as to the true nature of the demonstration. It was perfectly organised, and the populace were determined that the last penalty of the law should not be carried out in the instance of a person whom they believed to be the victim of an unjust persecution. Even at that early hour it was with difficulty that the cart could be driven through the dense crowd that encumbered those streets, generally so silent and deserted. As to Jean Louis, he seemed insensible to the excitement which his presence created; he was almost solely absorbed in the exhortations of the chaplain who accompanied him, and it was only at the corner of the Rue Satory that a shriek from a female voice aroused him from the state of pious resignation in which he seemed plunged. Then, for the first time, he wept, and was heard to exclaim, "Adieu, Hélène, adieu !"

"C'est au revoir qu'il faut dire, Jean Louis!" exclaimed a colossal man, who, with a group of other stalwart workmen, had accompanied the fatal cart from the prison doors. And he added, "They do not break fellows like you on the wheel!"

The crowd applauded these observations with cheers, that were taken up and prolonged to the Place Saint Louis. And no sooner, indeed, had the procession arrived at the foot of the scaffold, than the mob began its work. In a moment the palisading flew to pieces, and a howling, furious, irresistible mass of human beings took possession of the scaffold. The bonds that bound down the condemned man were cut in twain, and he was hoisted upon the shoulders of workmen, to be paraded triumphantly through the streets. Jean Louis is said to have resisted these proceedings. He is described as wishing to die, because he had been unintentionally the cause of his father's death. No harm was done to "Charlot," as the people called the public executioner, but he was glad to make his escape the moment an opportunity presented itself. What the soldiery and the gendarmerie did, we are not told. No doubt they felt the utter inutility of struggling against such multitudes, and took themselves off likewise. As to the scaffold, it was torn to pieces; the fire, which was to have judicially consumed the remains of Jean Louis, was lit up and fed with its fragments, among which was the wheel or cross of St. Andrewcommitted to the flames for the first and last time. Men and women then joined hands, and danced and sang round the bonfire, rejoicing in their exploit. It was, says Henry Sanson, "the first popular festival of the Revolution." It is, indeed, a curious incident-one that we do not find recorded in the pages of Michelet, of Louis Blanc, or even of Ternaux; yet, although the reader will not readily admit the correctness of the view taken of Jean Louis's innocence or culpability, upon the mere

asseverations of the public executioner, still the latter and more public incidents that attended this last attempt to carry out a barbarous solemnity must be accepted as historical.

Previous to this incident of the abolition of the wheel, and the first breaking out of popular excesses, Charles Henry Sanson had taken to himself a wife, the daughter of a market-gardener residing at Montmartre (which was not at that time covered with whitewashed cottages with green shutters), and whose acquaintance he had made when out shooting. The lady was thirty-two years of age, six years the senior of Charles Henry, and admirably adapted by her mental qualifications to take the head of the establishment of the chief executioner, which was at that epoch one of some importance. The former head of the house, Martha Dubut, had been called to her last account some time previously; but Jean Baptiste, the paralytic executioner, having lost his wife, had returned upon the hands of the family. The hotel in the Faubourg Poissonnière had been sold, and the establishment had removed to the Rue du Château d'Eau, in a spacious house with court and garden.

Charles Henry Sanson was twice in the presence of the unfortunate monarch Louis XVI. before he met him for the last time on the scaffold. The first of these occasions was caused by his claiming certain arrears of pay which the embarrassment of the royal finances had prevented being liquidated. Nothing remarkable occurred at this first interview, save that the monarch shuddered at the sight of the " maître des hautes œuvres ;" and Henry believes it was from a sad presentiment of evil, rather than from the horror inspired by the profession of the visitor. Credat Judæus Apella! Sanson, having explained to his majesty that he was in danger of arrest from not having wherewith to pay his creditors, the king, unable to liquidate the debt, ordered him a "sauf-conduit," which debarred his creditors from interfering with his person.

It was at the same epoch-that is to say, towards the end of 1789that Doctor Guillotin, deputy for the third estate in Paris-" to his eternal honour," according to Henry Sanson-first brought his motion before the National Assembly for inflicting the punishment of death in a uniform manner, without distinction of classes, and by simple decapitation. The adoption of this motion, although favourably received by an assembly of "égalitaires," was postponed for two years, on account of the difficulty of arriving at a decision as to the means of decapitation. Two incidents occurred in this long interval that tended to confirm the revolutionary feeling of the day against the old and more barbarous methods of putting to death. One of these was the case of the two young brothers Agasse, of good family, who had been convicted of forgery, and condemned to death. Their father, eighty years of age, was president of the district of Saint Honoré. Charles Henry made his appearance upon this occasion with the national cockade in his hat. The young men were pitied, not only for their early fate and good connexions, but also because it was felt that the punishment was in excess of the crime. "If," exclaimed Prudhomme in his " Révolutions," such crimes are punished with death, what punishment remains for the assassin, the parricide, or the traitor to his country?" The designation of the last, as the culminating point of crime, manifested how the public mind already stood on the brink of that

precipice of mutual distrust which ultimately led to the destruction of victims and victimisers alike. Public feeling was also outraged at this execution, by the fact that the elder brother, on being led down the steps of the Hôtel de Ville, had the body of his brother swinging in the air right before him.

The second case was that of the Marquis of Favras, convicted with having conspired to procure the liberation of the royal family. Monsieur, the king's brother, was implicated in the transaction, but he cleared himself, not very chivalrously, and at the expense of M. de Favras, by publicly declaring at the Hôtel de Ville that he had nothing but financial, and never any personal, affairs with the zealous but unfortunate royalist. Henry Sanson remarks, ironically, that "Monsieur" was a good deal indebted for the applause which his public exculpation met with, to the fact that the people were not at that time accustomed to have princes of the blood pleading in their presence. "The step taken by Monsieur flattered those feelings of pride which the nation derived from the consciousness of its importance." Such a step was, for that very reason, excessively mischievous, as every new concession, at such a crisis, tended to augment the self-importance of the mob. It was no longer a question of legal proceedings-the head of M. de Favras was claimed by the populace. The judges had lately acquitted the farmer-general Augeard, accused with having supplied moneys with which to bribe the soldiery, as also the Baron de Besenval, colonel of the Swiss Guard, implicated in the affair of July at the Champ de Mars, and they no longer dared to refuse a victim to public clamour. M. de Favras was condemned to be hung. He was actually led forth from the court to the scaffold, and no one paid attention to the fearful precedent which was thus established. The truculent mob insisted, also, that he should be led to the scaffold with the rope round his neck.

"Allons, saute, marquis!" was the expression of their melancholy cynicism. M. de Favras perished like a gentleman-a victim to the unbridled and disloyal passions of the populace-with expressions neither of· anger, impatience, nor contempt, at the manner in which he was treated, but with the firmness of an innocent man dying in a just cause, and resigned to the will of Heaven.

In the mean time Doctor Guillotin was making but little progress in his researches to discover the best means for decapitating his fellowcreatures. All that was presented by the past, as well as in the experience of other countries, was carefully consulted. Three German prints, by Pentz, Aldegreder, and Lucas of Cranach, as also an Italian print of 1555, due to Achille Bocchi, furnished models of machines to that effect, but which left much to desire. In the so-called Mannaïa, by which the famous conspirator Giustiniani suffered at Genoa, the patient was placed on his knees, while his head was bent forwards on a block. Sanson insisted that the body should be horizontally placed, so as to be relieved of its own weight, and thus offer no resistance to the action of the knife. According to Henry Sanson, the real discoverer of the guillotine was one Schmidt, who used to play the piano at his grandfather's house, while the latter accompanied him on the violin. This German was an excellent mechanic, as well as a good musician, and Sanson having told him of the dilemma in which they were then placed, he at once sketched a machine,

which became afterwards the guillotine-a knife suspended between two grooved uprights, and a movable plank, to which the patient could be made fast and then tilted over, so that his neck should fall at the point where the knife, loosened by a mere bit of string, would come down and sever it in twain.

Doctor Guillotin communicated the discovery to the Assembly on the 31st of April, 1791, and Doctor Louis, the king's physician, was appointed to advise upon its adoption. The love of the monarch for mechanics, especially in the matter of locks and watches, is well known, and having expressed to his physician his wish to see the proposed mechanism, Sanson accompanied Doctor Guillotin to a conference held in the Tuileries, on the 2nd of March, 1792. They were received by Doctor Louis, and were in the act of examining the sketch, when a door opened behind the tapestry, and another person entered into the doctor's study:

Doctor Louis, till that time seated, rose up. The new comer cast a cold look at Dr. Guillotin, who bowed reverentially, and then addressing himself abruptly to Louis, he said:

"Well, doctor! what do you think of it?"

"It appears to me perfect," answered the doctor, "and fully justifies all that M. Guillotin has told me about it."

Saying this, he passed over the sketch to the person who had interrogated him. The latter examined it a few moments in silence, and then shook his head, as if in doubt.

"Is this knife, in the form of a crescent, what is wanted? Do you think that a knife so formed can adapt itself exactly to all necks? There are some that it would barely cut, and others that it would not even embrace.'

Ever since this person had come in, Charles Henry Sanson had not lost a look nor a word. The sound of the voice satisfied him that he was not deceived in his first impression; it was the king who was once more before him-the king in a dark suit, without orders on his breast, and who, by the attitude which he had taken and imposed on those who must know him, showed that he wished this time to preserve a strict incognito.

Charles Henry Sanson was struck with the justice of his observation, and mechanically raising his eyes to the king's neck, which was but lightly covered with a thin lace kerchief, he remarked that the prince, vigorously constituted, had a muscular neck, the proportions of which far exceeded the dimensions of the crescent traced by Schmidt's pencil. He shuddered involuntarily, and, as he remained absorbed in thought, he heard the king's voice whispering to Doctor Louis, while his eyes were on him :

"Is that the man?”

The doctor nodded an affirmative.

"Ask him his opinion," added Louis XVI.

"You have heard monsieur's observation," said the king's physician. "What do you think as to the proper shape of the knife ?"

"Monsieur is perfectly in the right," my grandfather replied, dwelling with a marked emphasis upon the word, Monsieur; "the shape of the knife might entail difficulties."

The king smiled with an appearance of satisfaction; then, taking up July-VOL. CXXVIII. NO. DXI.

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