Engines began to snort, machinery and appliances were got ready to start once more on their usual tasks, and smoke already curled away from the forest of lofty brick chimneys which, on all sides, sprang out of the gloom.
It then seemed to Guillaume that the guillotine was really in its right place in that district of want and toil.

It stood in its own realm, like a _terminus_ and a threat.

Did not ignorance, poverty and woe lead to it?
And each time that it was set up amidst those toilsome streets, was it not charged to overawe the disinherited ones, the starvelings, who, exasperated by everlasting injustice, were always ready for revolt?
It was not seen in the districts where wealth and enjoyment reigned.

It would there have seemed purposeless, degrading and truly monstrous.

And it was a tragical and terrible coincidence that the bomb-thrower, driven mad by want, should be guillotined there, in the very centre of want's dominion.
But daylight had come at last, for it was nearly half-past four.