feverishly awaiting the verdict, heard them singing the Marseillaise in chorus on their approach, and recognised the signal of doom. To whatever shade of political opinion the prisoners might belong, the fate of these men, still so young in years—Brissot, the eldest of them being under forty—cut them to the heart.
At midnight a funeral repast was laid out in the dungeon, sent by an unknown friend. Nothing had been forgotten. Delicately prepared dishes, exquisite vines, rare flowers, were lavishly supplied. Sitting there for the last time, the doomed Twenty spent the night together; now conversing with the philosophic calm of a Socrates, now, like true children of Voltaire and Diderot, touching with brief lightning flashes of wit the overhanging cloud of death. Oh! do we not seem to see them sitting there, lit up by bright-burning tapers, passing the wine-cup round, eyes bright with life, still busily talking, singing—breaking off in their songs to talk again of the great passion which makes them one—Republican France! Vergniaud, presiding, surpasses himself in the splendour of his thoughts; the practical Gensonné has nothing at heart but his country's future; leaning shoulder to shoulder, the Ninus and Euryalus of the Revolution feel blest in their friendship; Brissot, graver than the rest, is absorbed in meditation; the republican priest, Fauchet, speaks of that Last Supper seventeen hundred years ago, and of Christ on Calvary; and all the while, like the mummy at the Egyptian banquets, stretched beside them lies the cold corpse of Valazé.
Hark! how quickly the clocks are striking the successive hours of night, and the tapers are burning low,
