Page 45 (1/1)

It is a consoling idea (let us re), to think that the death penalty, which three hundred years ago still encuibbets, and all its paraphernalia of torture, permanent and riveted to the pavement, the Grève, the Halles, the Place Dauphine, the Cross du Trahoir, the Marché aux Pourceaux, that hideous Montfauçon, the barrier des Sergents, the Place aux Chats, the Porte Saint-Denis, Champeaux, the Porte Baudets, the Porte Saint Jacques, without reckoning the innumerable ladders of the provosts, the bishop of the chapters, of the abbots, of the priors, who had the decree of life and death,--without reckoning the judicial drownings in the river Seine; it is consoling to-day, after having lost successively all the pieces of its arination and fancy, its torture for which it reconstructed every five years a leather bed at the Grand Châtelet, that ancient suzerain of feudal society aled from our laws and our cities, hunted froer, in our immense Paris, any more than a dishonored corner of the Grève,--than a uillotine, furtive, uneasy, shaht in the act, so quickly does it disappear after having dealt its blow