THE SCAFFOLD.
Upon the Place de la Révolution, leaning against a lamp-post, two men were waiting. Of those who followed with the crowd, some were carried to the Place du Palais, others to the Place de la Révolution, while the rest spread, impatient and tumultuous, over the whole road separating the two places. They were waiting until the queen should reach the instrument of punishment, which, defaced by the sun and storm, worn by the hand of the executioner, and, most horrible! blunted by too frequent contact with its victims, reared its head with a sinister pride over the subjacent mass, like a queen ruling her people. The two men, arm-in-arm, and speaking by fits and starts, with pale lips and contracted brows, were Lorin and Maurice. Lost in the crowd, but not in a way calculated to excite suspicion, they continued in a low tone their conversation, which was perhaps not the least interesting one then circulating among the various groups which, like an electric chain, a living sea, was agitated from the Pont-au-Change to the Pont de la Révolution.
The idea we have expressed regarding the scaffold seemed to have struck them both.
"See," said Maurice, "how the hideous monster rears her red arms; might it not be said that she calls us, and grins at us through her wicket as if it was her horrid mouth?"
"I," said Lorin, "must confess I do not belong to the school of poetry which sees everything blood-color. I see everything couleur-de-rose, and even at the foot of that dreadful machine I should sing and hope still. 'Dum spiro spero.'"
"You hope when they murder women?"
"Maurice," said Lorin, "child of the Revolution, do not deny your mother! Ah! Maurice, remain a stanch and loyal patriot. She who is condemned to die is unlike all other women; she is the evil genius of France."