Page:History of the Guillotine.djvu/78

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STATIONS OF THE GUILLOTINE.
63

melted them into mercy; but in a few days he was again arrested, and brought before the new tribunal, which was now become more inexorable than even the mob of murderers, and on the 25th of September the Guillotine left the heroic Elizabeth Cazotte fatherless.

We have scanty records of the ordinary execution of justice during the revolutionary paroxysm. We suspect that there were comparatively few punishments but those of a political nature. We find that on the 14th July, an Abbé Geoffroi, ci-devant Vicaire-Général, was executed on the Place de Greve for forgery of assignats; and again, on the 27th of August, 1792, three persons, who seem to have been of a superior rank in life, and are designated in the Moniteur as "Messieurs Vimal, L'Abbé Sauvade, and Guillot," were executed as accomplices in the same, or a similar forgery. These parties had been tried in the ordinary courts, before the new tribunal was created, but they had appealed, and the appeal had been decided against them, though their guilt is very doubtful; they were now executed, and it was in exhibiting one of these heads to the people that the younger Sanson fell off the scaffold and was killed. Some other executions of the same class seem also to have given employment to the guillotine, but we have no details.

From the time of the installation of the Revolutionary Tribunal, it seems that the Guillotine was not removed, as it at first used to be, after each execution, but was for some time kept stationary in the