It was the theatre of the day.

The gibbet and the wheel did their work almost periodically, and people looked on while poor wretches writhed in slow agony all day long.

Sometimes the programme was varied by decapitation and even by the stake.

Torture had its legends and its heroes--the everyday talk of the generation which, having begun by seeing Damiens torn by red-hot pincers, was to end by rending Foulon limb from limb." (Carne, _Monarchie francaise au 18ieme Siecle_, p.

493.)] [Footnote 40: _Lettres sur les Anglais_, xxiii.] [Footnote 41: _Essai sur le Merite_, I.ii.Sec.