one may refrain from pronouncing upon it, from saying yes or no,
so long as one has not seen a guillotine with one's own eyes:
but if one encounters one of them, the shock is violent;
one is forced to decide, and to take part for or against.
Some admire it, like de Maistre; others execrate it, like Beccaria.
The guillotine is the concretion of the law; it is called vindicte;
it is not neutral, and it does not permit you to remain neutral.
He who sees it shivers with the most mysterious of shivers.
All social problems erect their interrogation point around
this chopping-knife. The scaffold is a vision. The scaffold
is not a piece of carpentry; the scaffold is not a machine;
the scaffold is not an inert bit of mechanism constructed of wood,
iron and cords.

It seems as though it were a being, possessed of I know not what
sombre initiative; one would say that this piece of carpenter's
work saw, that this machine heard, that this mechanism understood,
that this wood, this iron, and these cords were possessed of will.
In the frightful meditation into which its presence casts the soul
the scaffold appears in terrible guise, and as though taking part in
what is going on. The scaffold is the accomplice of the executioner;
it devours, it eats flesh, it drinks blood; the scaffold is a sort
of monster fabricated by the judge and the carpenter, a spectre
which seems to live with a horrible vitality composed of all the death
which it has inflicted.

Therefore, the impression was terrible and profound; on the day
following the execution, and on many succeeding days, the Bishop
appeared to be crushed. The almost violent serenity of the
funereal moment had disappeared; the phantom of social justice