idea of hearing the roar of the multitude at some of the horrid
displays of the guillotine; and as I half opened my unwilling eyes,
still heavy with sleep, I saw a long procession of figures, in flowing
mantles and draperies, moving down the huge hall. A semicircle of beds
filled the extremity of the chapel, which had been vacated by a draft
of unfortunate beings, carried off during the day to that dreadful
tribunal, whose sole employment seemed to be the supply of the axe,
and from which no one was ever expected to return. While my eyes, with
a strange and almost superstitious anxiety--such is the influence of
time and place--followed this extraordinary train, I saw it take
possession of the range of beds; each new possessor sitting wrapt in
his pale vesture, and perfectly motionless. I can scarcely describe
the singular sensations with which I continued to gaze on the
spectacle. My eyes sometimes closed, and I almost conceived that the
whole was a dream; but the forms were too distinct for this
conjecture, and the question with me now became, "are they flesh and
blood?" I had not sunk so far into reverie as to imagine that they
were the actual spectres of the unhappy tenants of those beds on the
night before, all of whom were now, doubtless, in the grave; but the
silence, the distance, the dimness perplexed me, and I left the
question to be settled by the event. At a gesture from the central
figure they all stood up--and a man loaded with fetters was brought
forward in front of their line. I now found that a trial was going on:
the group were the judges, the man was the presumed criminal; there
was an accuser, there was an advocate--in short, all the general
process of a trial was passing before my view. Curiosity would
naturally have made me spring from my bed and approach this
extraordinary spectacle; but I am not ashamed now to acknowledge, that
I felt a nervelessness and inability to speak or move, which for the
time wholly awed me. All that I could discover was, that the accused