pervaded the fair occupants of the windows and balconies. Damiens appeared, slowly mounting the steps of the scaffold.
The executioners spent some minutes in firmly binding him to the chair, from the back of which extended a horizontal piece of wood about two feet in length. To this his right arm was securely strapped, his hand protruding just beyond it. Executioner No. 1 now advanced, and held under it a brazier filled with sulphur. A horrible cry burst from the wretched man, a cry that seemed to issue from his very vitals, and that for months afterwards rang in the ears of the spectators. The ladies shuddered: some nearly fainted, and retired a little way from the windows. Soon they returned, refreshing themselves with their smelling-bottles, and levelled their glasses once more at the scaffold. There was no fire visible. The sun had just burst through the clouds, and effaced the pale flame, in which his hand was slowly and invisibly burning. But a nameless stench filled the air, and a thick fetid smoke rose over the scaffold, gradually spreading itself out, and hanging like a pall over criminal and spectators, as if it would shut out the pitying heavens from this scene of cruelty.
Damiens cried out no more. He sat quietly looking at the blackened bones fast withering in the flame.
Meanwhile the horrible caldrons were bubbling and hissing, and the pincers of the Provost’s Court of Paris were heating in the furnace. The worst was yet to come. A gigantic executioner now advanced and tore the criminal’s flesh with the red-hot irons in six different places. His assistants followed carrying spoonsful of resin, oil, lead, pitch, sulphur and wax, which they poured into the gaping incisions. Soon the breast, the arms, the thighs were one awful wound. All this time Faubourg St. Antoine and Faubourg St. Germain looked on alike unsated; and the high-born dames of Louis the Fifteenth’s court smiled and chatted with their cavaliers, and looked and shrank back, and looked again.
All was not yet over. Damiens still breathed, still suffered, and occasionally cried out. Four horses were now led forward. The noble animals were almost ungovernable. All the morning they had struggled to escape from this dreadful spot; from the cries and groans, the thick smoke and sickening smell that filled the air. It was their turn now to take the place of the executioner, who could not find a fresh spot on the victim’s body to torment.
Damiens was carried down the steps of the scaffold; the horses were backed towards him as he lay on the ground, and the nimble executioners made fast the traces. The grooms loosed their heads, and with a terrified snort, they sprang forwards. But human thews and sinews were too strong for them. They were thrown on their haunches, and with a dull, heavy thud, the body struck the ground. Again and again they started. Urged on by blows and shouts, they pulled, and pulled in vain. A quarter of an hour passed away. Damiens still lived—still breathed. At intervals he even raised his head, and looked at the animals.
“Oh! those poor horses!” exclaimed Mademoiselle de Priandeau, the young and beautiful niece of the Financier Bouret.
Evening was approaching. The commissioners appointed to preside over the execution were embarrassed. It was necessary to carry it out according to the strict letter of the sentence, which directed the criminal to be quartered. The crowd, too, was waxing indignant, and clamorously demanded the coup-de-grace. They consulted together, and at length ordered the muscles and tendons of the legs and arms to be severed. Once more the horses plunged wildly forward—and this time all was over.
One of Bentham’s discoveries in morals was that the pleasures of malignity were only to be branded as evil because they were less than the pain given in indulging them. In like manner all infliction of punishment which gave more pain than it prevented from being given, was, in Benthamite philosophy, to be regarded as leaving a balance of evil. Without going so far as this, it is still indisputable, that the great end of all punishment, viz., prevention, is never attained by excessive severity. On the contrary, the very notoriety which such punishment obtains, exercises an extraordinary morbid influence over some minds, and actually incites them to incur the same penalty. The excesses of the French Revolution were the result of such scenes as those here described. The thirst for blood that courtly lords and ladies nurtured in the populace, required ere long to be slaked with theirs, and exacted a terrible retribution.
FROM GRAY’S INN TO GORHAMBURY.
“This Doll Tear-Sheet should be some road!” is an exclamation familiar to the readers of every edition of Shakspeare,—from the first folio of 1623, price one hundred and twenty-three pounds, (shades of Heminge and Condell!), down to the Penny Acting Edition of the great poet, published in numbers, and on Dickinson paper, price one hundred and twenty-three pence. And what is the equally familiar reply? It is much to our point, “Aye, as common as the road from London to St. Alban’s.”
Scotch trampers, and Hobson, your twice-a-week carrier, of course, excluded, who is now familiar with the road from London to the land of Lord Bacon? Here, in this disfranchised borough in which I write, two-thirds of the residents under twenty years of age are ignorant of the road—new or old, Roman or macadamised—from the town of the Sainted Alban of Cologne to William Cobbett’s Wen. Neither a Palmer’s mail nor a Saracen’s Head coach runs, in the year 1862, to or from London and St. Alban’s. We have a single line of rail, it is true—a bit of an off-shoot of a thing—from Watford-on-the-Main, just enough to remind the inhabitants what fools they were in resisting the construction of a directer road from London to St. Alban’s.
When the large-browed Lord of Verulam himself rolled in his high and strong-built chariot from London to St. Alban’s, what road did he take?