“One of these days,” said the latter, thinking he had caught his superior in a weak moment, “some philanthropist who ponders over death as I do over life will invent a machine to chop off the head to bring about instantaneous extinction of the vital spark, which is not done by any means of execution now in practice. The rack, the garrote the rope, these are all methods of torture appertaining to barbarous peoples and not to the civilized. An enlightened nation like France ought to punish and not revenge: for the society which racks, strangles and decapitates by the sword inflicts punishment by the pain besides that of death alone, the culprit’s portion. This is overdoing the penalty by half, I think.”
“It is my opinion, too. What idea do you have of such an instrument?”
“A machine, cold and emotionless as the Law itself; the man charged with the inflection is affected by the sight of the criminal in his own likeness; and he misses his stroke, as at the beheading of Chalais and of the Duke of Monmouth. A machine would not do that, say, a wooden arm which brought down an ax on the neck.”
“I have seen something of the kind in operation, the Maiden, it is called in Scotland, and the Mannaja, in Italy. But I have also seen the decapitated criminals rise without their heads, from the seat on which they were placed, and stagger off a dozen paces. I have picked up such heads, by the hair, as you just did that one which tumbled off the table, and when I uttered in the ear the name with which it was baptized, I saw the eyes open to see who called and showed that still on the earth it had quitted one could cry after what was passing from time to eternity.”
“Merely a nervous movement.”
“Are not the nerves the organs of sense? I conclude that it would be better for man, instead of seeking a machine to kill without pain for punishment, he had better seek the way to punish without killing. The society that discovers that will be the best and most enlightened.”
“Another Utopia!” exclaimed Marat.
“Perhaps you are right, this once,” responded Balsamo. “It is time that will enlighten us.”
Marat wrapped up the female head in his handkerchief which he tied by the four corners in a knot.
“In this way, I am sure that my colleagues will not rob me of my head,” he said.