hard by, whence I should see the play of the new instrument of death. I excused myself; but from the window of my own entresol I was curious to observe, as the spectators were returning, the impression that it made upon the public. It appeared to me that in general they said, 'Mais ce n'est rien' ['Tis nothing at all], in allusion, no doubt, to the quickness of the execution. M. Guillotin does not deserve the sad honour of giving his name to this new instrument, but rather M. Louis, perpetual secretary of the Academy of Surgeons."—Souvenirs de Soixante-treize Ans (Limoges, 1836), pp. 168, 169.
We have here to observe that Sanson, the chief executioner, and his two brothers, had been themselves sent to prison after the 10th of August, on the monstrous hypothesis that, "if the Court had succeeded on that day, the Sansons were to have hanged the patriots." Their real offence was that they had somehow offended the patriot Gorsas, the newspaper editor before-mentioned, whose Jacobinical violence, in a few days after, procured his election into the Convention—a woful elevation, as we shall see presently! The assistance, however, of the Sansons was necessary to the executions; and the three brothers were brought in a hackney-coach, and in custody, from the Conciergerie to the Carrousel, for the execution of Dangremont, and taken back again. They were again brought forth for the execution of La Porte, and again taken back; after the execution of Durosoi they were released, but they were again arrested within a few days, and were only removed from the Abbaye just before the massacre began;
