When they saw him standing on the scaffold, a shudder ran through the crowd; the women cried aloud, the men clenched their fists.
While they were strapping him to the plank, he looked up at the knife, saying: "When I reflect that I was once a Bonapartist!" Then, raising his eyes to Heaven, he exclaimed, "Vive la Republique!" The next moment his head fell.
It was a day of mourning at Belley and through all the villages of the Ain.

"How did he die ?" people would ask.--"Bravely."-- "God be praised!" In this wise a man has been killed.
The mind succumbs and is lost in horror in presence of a deed so damnable.
This crime being added to the rest complements and sets a sinister sort of seal upon them.
It is more than the complement, it is the crowning act.
One feels that M.Bonaparte ought to be satisfied! To have shot down at night, in the dark, in solitude, on the Champ-de-Mars, under the arches of the bridges, behind a lonely wall, at random, haphazard, no matter whom, unknown persons, shadows, the very number of whom none can tell; to cause nameless persons to be slain by nameless persons; and to have all this vanish in obscurity, in oblivion, is, in very truth, far from gratifying to one's self-esteem; it looks like hiding one's self, and in truth that is what it is; it is commonplace.

Scrupulous men have the right to say to you: "You know you are afraid; you would not dare to do these things publicly; you shrink from your own acts." And, to a certain extent, they seem to be right.

To shoot down people by night is a violation of every law, human and divine, but it lacks audacity.

One does not feel triumphant afterwards.