It was difficult to get a good sight of the general, so great was the curiosity of the crowd: his head fell forward on his breast, and he had only sufficient strength to raise it two or three times to reply to the exhortations of the priests.
The cortège took nearly an hour to get from the prison to the place of execution. When the foot of the gallows was reached, the general was raised from the hurdle, covered with dust, and placed on the first step of the scaffold. There he made his last confession. Then they dragged him up the ladder; for, his feet being bound, he could not mount it himself. All the while a priest kept beseeching God to forgive him his sins, as he forgave those who had trespassed against him. When they had hauled him a certain height, those who raised the condemned man stopped. The act of faith was begun and, at the last word, the general was hurled from the top of the ladder. At the very instant that the priest pronounced the word Jésus-Christ, which was the signal, the executioner leapt on the shoulders of the martyr, while two men hung from his legs, completing the hideous group. Twice the shout of "Vive le roi!" went up, first from the rows of spectators near by; the second time from a few individuals alone. Then a man leapt from out the crowd, stepped towards the scaffold, and struck Riégo's body a blow with his stick. That night they carried the corpse into the nearest church, and it was interred in the Campo-Santo by the Brothers of Charity.
Nothing is known of Riégo's last moments, as no one was allowed to come near him; the monks, his bitterest enemies, being desirous of throwing all possible odium on his dying moments.
"The last of the Gracchi," according to Mirabeau, "in the act of death, threw dust steeped in his own blood into the air. Thence was born Marius."
Riégo left a song; from that song was born a revolution, and from that revolution the Republic.
[CHAPTER VII]
The inn of the Tête-Noire—Auguste Ballet—Castaing—His trial—His attitude towards the audience and his words to the jury—His execution