--It was proved that Le Bon, on an occasion when he chose
to be a spectator of some executions he had been the cause of,
suspended the operation while he read the newspaper aloud, in order,
as he said, that the aristocrates might go out of the world with the
additional mortification of learning the success of the republican
arms in their last moments.
The People of Brest were suffered to behold, I had almost said to be
amused with (for if those who order such spectacles are detestable,
the people that permit them are not free from blame,) the sight of
twenty-five heads ranged in a line, and still convulsed with the
agonies of death.--The cant word for the Guillotine was "our holy
mother;" and verdicts of condemnation were called prizes in the
Sainte Lotterie--"holy lottery."
The dark and ferocious character of Le Bon developes itself hourly: the
whole department trembles before him; and those who have least merited
persecution are, with reason, the most apprehensive. The most cautious
prudence of conduct, the most undeviating rectitude in those who are by
their fortune or rank obnoxious to the tyrant, far from contributing to
their security, only mark them out for a more early sacrifice. What is
still worse, these horrors are not likely to terminate, because he is
allowed to pay out of the treasury of the department the mob that are
employed to popularize and applaud them.
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