very wicked, very abominable, and very detestable parricide, and wounded the King with a knife in the right side, for which he repents and begs pardon of God, the King, and Justice; and further the Court orders that he then be taken to the Grève and, on a scaffold erected for the purpose, that his chest, arms, thighs, and calves be burnt with pincers; his right hand, holding the knife with which he committed the said parricide, burnt in sulphur; that boiling oil, melted lead, and rosin, and wax mixed with sulphur, be poured in his wounds; and after that his body be pulled and dismembered by four horses, and the members and body consumed in fire, and the ashes scattered to the winds. The Court orders that his property be confiscated to the King's profit; that before the said execution, Damiens be subjected to question ordinaire et extraordinaire, to make him confess the names of his accomplices. Orders that the house in which he was born be demolished, and that no other building be erected on the spot.

'Decreed by Parliament on March 26, 1757.

'RICHARD.'

This sentence, which so minutely describes the details of the punishment, cannot but inspire irresistible horror. Formal deliberations took place at the house of the procureur-général regarding the choice of preliminary tortures; the contagion of cruelty extended to the public, and private individuals made suggestions on the subject. One proposed that matches should be inserted under Damiens' nails, and then

lighted; another that his teeth should be pulled out; another that he should be partly flayed and a burning liquid poured over his muscles. The surgeons of the Court examined these proposals, and decided that torture by the 'boot' was preferable to other means.

If I give these sickening details, it is because Damiens' execution was almost unique in its atrocious cruelty. Singularly enough, this, the most horrible of inflictions ever recorded, occurred but a few years before the abolition of torture.

CHAPTER XI.

EXECUTION OF DAMIENS.

The authors of the apocryphal memoirs published by Sautelet1 found no better means of endowing their compilation with the appearance of authenticity than to allege that these memoirs were written by my grandfather. They represent him as being present during Damiens' execution, of which the details were said to be furnished by him, and Charles Jean-Baptiste Sanson, who was then executioner. Charles Henri relates how his father became almost mad with grief, when he heard that he had to dismember; how he went to Melun to purchase the four horses required for the occasion; the whole being spiced with details not a whit more accurate. The chapter in question is completed by the narrative of a visit which the keeper of the seals, escorted by four seigneurs, one of whom was the Duke de Richelieu, paid to the executioner with the object of replacing the horses he had bought for the dismemberment by weaker animals, so as to prolong the sufferings of the culprit.

1 Fictitious memoirs of Charles Henri Sanson, executioner during the Revolution, were published in 1832. Balzac was one of the authors of this work, which was one of pure invention.

Not only did nothing of the kind take place, M. de Machault usually transmitting his orders to my ancestor through the procureur-général, or requesting him to call at his residence, but Charles Jean-Baptiste Sanson could take no part in the execution of Damiens, as, in the month of January 1754, he became paralysed, and also because this execution was not within his province, but that of Nicolas Gabriel Sanson, his younger brother, executioner of the Prévoté de l'Hôtel.

This office was little more than a sinecure; crimes tried by the Prévoté had not been met with capital punishment for fifty years. When Gabriel Sanson received an order to prepare, not only for the execution of Damiens, but also for his torture, he was filled with apprehension. He spoke to M. Leclerc de Brillet, lieutenant of the Prévoté, who gave him a letter for the procureurgénéral, in which he urged the latter, in the interest of all parties, to entrust the forthcoming execution to other hands. But, as I said, Charles Jean-Baptiste Sanson was paralysed. His son, Charles Henri Sanson, who was to take his place, was only seventeen years of age. He had discharged his father's functions for the last two years; but the official title of executioner did not belong to him, and it was hardly advisable to entrust so young a man with an execution which was only known by tradition. The procureur was therefore unable to grant the request, but he ordered that Charles Henri, the provisional executioner, and his assistants should be at Gabriel Sanson's disposition.

It was Charles Henri who bought the four horses;

he paid for them 432 livres, a large sum for the time. These horses were placed in a stable of the Rue des Vieilles Garnisons, behind the Hôtel-de-Ville. At the request of M. Leclerc de Brillet, the archives were searched, and papers on the manner of carrying out the execution were found and handed to the executioner of Prévoté de l'Hôtel, whose terror was in no wise diminished by the communication. Indeed, his feelings became so strong that he fell ill. The procureur summoned him to his presence, and upbraided him for what he styled his childishness. The magistrate's threats did not affect him much, for he was speaking of giving up his office, which was his only source of income, when an old questionnaire whose father had taken part in the execution of Ravaillac, and had given some information regarding the punishment of regicides, offered to undertake the burning with pincers.

The scaffold was erected in the night of the 27th. On Monday, the 28th, at six o'clock in the morning, Gabriel Sanson, his nephew Charles Henri, and their assistants went to the Grève to see if all their directions had been attended to. The scaffold was erected in the centre of a space of a hundred square feet, which was surrounded by thick wooden palings. This enclosed space had only two entrances; one for the culprit, the executioners, and the guards, the other communicating with the Hotel-de-Ville.

They then repaired to the Conciergerie, where they found the questionnaire, who was waiting for them. Soon afterwards they were joined by M. Lebreton, the