It stood there under the branches of the trees, amidst the delicate
greenery of the fresh leaves of spring. A neighbouring gas-lamp, whose
light was turning yellow in the rising dawn, cast vague gleams upon it.
The work of fixing it in position--work performed as quietly as could be,
so that the only sound was the occasional thud of a mallet--had just been
finished; and the headsman's "valets" or assistants, in frock-coats and
tall silk hats, were waiting and strolling about in a patient way. But
the instrument itself, how base and shameful it looked, squatting on the
ground like some filthy beast, disgusted with the work it had to
accomplish! What! those few beams lying on the ground, and those others
barely nine feet high which rose from it, keeping the knife in position,
constituted the machine which avenged Society, the instrument which gave
a warning to evil-doers! Where was the big scaffold painted a bright red
and reached by a stairway of ten steps, the scaffold which raised high
bloody arms over the eager multitude, so that everybody might behold the
punishment of the law in all its horror! The beast had now been felled to
the ground, where it simply looked ignoble, crafty and cowardly. If on
the one hand there was no majesty in the manner in which human justice
condemned a man to death at its assizes: on the other, there was merely
horrid butchery with the help of the most barbarous and repulsive of
mechanical contrivances, on the terrible day when that man was executed.
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