39/39 He saw them mount the platform; saw them kneel down together till plucked up by the impatient officials; could see that she was urging some request to the executioner; the end of which seemed to be, that Clement advanced first to the guillotine, was executed (and just at this moment there was a stir among the crowd, as of a man pressing forward towards the scaffold). Then she, standing with her face to the guillotine, slowly made the sign of the cross, and knelt down. The report of a pistol made him look up. She was gone--another victim in her place--and where there had been a little stir in the crowd not five minutes before, some men were carrying off a dead body. A man had shot himself, they said. |