The number of prisoners grew and grew. On the 1st May they mounted to 8000.
On the 8th, Lavoisier was executed; and twenty-seven other tax-collectors, whose names are now forgotten, were executed with him.
On the 10th, Princess Élisabeth ascended the scaffold; and, as her neckerchief was pushed aside, she exclaimed to the executioner:
"In the name of modesty, monsieur, cover up my bosom."
She died as she had lived, a Christian, a saint, a martyr.
On the 8th June, Robespierre celebrated the Feast of Supreme Reason. He was the high priest of the new religion. Standing on a platform raised against the walls of the Tuileries, and surrounded by his disciples, he made a speech in which he condescended to recognise the Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul; after which he set fire to two mannikins representing Atheism and Fanaticism.
Still the prisoners went on increasing. 11,400 were incarcerated in Paris prisons.
There were thirty-two prisons in Paris—twenty-seven more than in the time of the Bastille.
A 2nd and 3rd of September was expected.
A 9th and 10th of Thermidor arrived, and it was high time. At Bicêtre the experiment of a guillotine with nine blades was tried. The former machine, it seemed, could not work fast enough. By the 25th, 26th, and 27th July they had only managed to execute some 135 persons in all by means of the guillotines between the Place de la Révolution and that of the faubourg St. Antoine.