Page:History of the Guillotine.djvu/73

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58
ESSAY ON THE GUILLOTINE.

populace by the execution of one who was officially so near the King's person, and so much in his confidence; and whose condemnation was therefore a, promise and a pledge that his royal master should undergo the same fate. Poor Durosoi was one of the few Royalist journalists, and he was therefore thought a fit victim for the new tribunal. His last hours are pathetically recorded by M. Journiac de St. Méard, in his interesting work—one of the most interesting that ever was published—'Mon Agonie de Trente-huit Heures;' but we cannot enter into such details, and we only notice these three first condemnations to show how little they had to do with what could be called the crimes of the 10th of August, and to mark the strange inaccuracies with which they have been recorded.

We will first observe that the dates of the three executions, as given in the 'Liste des Condamnes,' are all erroneous by four or five days. Dangremont suffered, not on the 26th but, on the 21st; La Porte not on the 28th, but on the 24th; and Durosoi not on the 29th, but on the 25th; and these misdates are the more remarkable, because Durosoi, in mounting the scaffold, took pride in "dying as a Royalist on St Louis's day," the 25th of August. In the Moniteur, which does not venture to mention the death of the first of these political victims of the guillotine till nine days after the fact (30th August), he is miscalled "Danglemont" and a second time doubly misnamed "Connot Danglemont:" and Lacretelle, in his 'Précis Chronologique,' makes the same