"You saw how slight that instrument was? It was one of the first
which Guillotin made, and which he showed to private friends in a
hangar in the Rue Picpus, where he lived. The invention created
some little conversation among scientific men at the time, though I
remember a machine in Edinburgh of a very similar construction, two
hundred--well, many, many years ago--and at a breakfast which
Guillotin gave he showed us the instrument, and much talk arose
among us as to whether people suffered under it.

"And now I must tell you what befell the traitor who had caused all
this suffering. Did he know that the poor child's death was a
SENTENCE? He felt a cowardly satisfaction that with her was gone
the secret of his treason. Then he began to doubt. I had MEANS to
penetrate all his thoughts, as well as to know his acts. Then he
became a slave to a horrible fear. He fled in abject terror to a
convent. They still existed in Paris; and behind the walls of
Jacobins the wretch thought himself secure. Poor fool! I had but
to set one of my somnambulists to sleep. Her spirit went forth and
spied the shuddering wretch in his cell. She described the street,
the gate, the convent, the very dress which he wore, and which you
saw to-day.

"And now THIS is what happened. In his chamber in the Rue St.
Honore, at Paris, sat a man ALONE--a man who has been maligned, a
man who has been called a knave and charlatan, a man who has been
persecuted even to the death, it is said, in Roman Inquisitions,
forsooth, and elsewhere. Ha! ha! A man who has a mighty will.

"And looking toward the Jacobins Convent (of which, from his