Surely this is hell already begun. The wretched man opens his eyes, glued together with blood; a shade of deadlier hue passes over his livid, sea-green face; he shudders, but utters no sound. The tumbrel reaches the Place de la Revolution. The furies of the guillotine rush round it, and execute a dance of fiendish joy, the crowd making room for them and applauding. Now the cart stops, and the condemned alight. In the first are the two Robespierres, Couthon, Henriot, and Lebas. Maximilien Robespierre is the only one who has strength left in him to ascend the scaffold without help. He stood on the fatal step whither a few days ago his nod sufficed to send the noblest heads in France; within a few yards of the spot where only six weeks ago he had decreed the existence of the Omnipotent, at whose judgment-bar he was now going to appear. Seldom indeed does that silent, inscrutable Judge allow us to behold the judgments of his justice accomplished here below, and amidst circumstances so palpably impressive, and to our human eyes so fearfully appropriate, as was this death-scene of Robespierre's. He showed no sign of terror or remorse, but, dumb and self-contained to the last, yielded himself to Samson's hands. Only when the bandage was wrenched brutally from the broken jaw, letting it drop from the face, he uttered a piercing cry that rang above the yells of the multitude. It was the last sound his voice emitted in this world. Samson did his work, and Robespierre was no more.
One long, loud shout of gladness went up to heaven, and carried the tidings to the ends of France on wings quicker than words. It penetrated [pg 688] the iron doors of the prisons, like the sweet beams of the golden dawn, and bade men hope and rejoice, for the Reign of Terror was at an end and the gates of their dungeons unlocked.
The guillotine has been so prominent a figure in the foregoing sketch, as indeed throughout the whole span of the Reign of Terror, that a word on its origin may not be uninteresting. It is popularly supposed to have been invented by Dr. Guillotin, but this is a mistake. The first idea of it emanated from him, and he had the unenviable glory of giving it his name; but these are his only claims to its invention. The guillotine would seem to be almost a creature born spontaneously of the Revolution, a cruel offspring of the self-devouring monster. It is strange that, until the “Sainte Guillotine” was enthroned as the agent of that murder-mad reign, no mention is ever made in the reports of the time of the exact kind of machine used in capital punishment. We read of persons being “condemned” and “executed,” but there is no more definite account of the manner of execution. The lanterne was the mode of capital punishment up to the Reign of Terror, and the mob could always do summary justice on its victims by making a gallows of the nearest lamp-post; but when speed became the primary object, this was found too tedious, besides being troublesome. Towards the close of the year 1789 Dr. Guillotin was elected to the States-General. He was such a mediocre, insignificant person in every way that his appearance in the Assembly caused general surprise and laughter. In the Portraits of Celebrated Persons, a contemporaneous work, we find him thus treated: “By what accident has a man without either ability or reputation obtained for himself a frightful immortality? He fathered a work written by a lawyer—Hardouin—who had too much character to produce it in his own name; and his work having been censured by the parliament, Guillotin, who assumed the responsibility of it, became the man of the day, and owed to it that gleam of reputation which ensured his election to the States-General. He was, in truth, a nobody who made himself a busy-body, and by meddling with everything was at once mischievous and ridiculous.” This meddling personage made himself extremely ridiculous on the one occasion to which may be traced his ill-starred celebrity. He proposed in the Assembly that some machine, more humane and expeditious than the process of hanging, should be invented for capital punishment, and, after describing the idea that was in his mind, he proceeded to illustrate it by a pantomime with his fingers, straightening out the left index, and bringing down that of the right hand over the thumb with a snap. “There, now, I put your head here; this falls, and it is cut off; you feel nothing; it is the affair of a moment!” Roars of laughter followed this lucid and cheerful explanation, and the next day the ballad-mongers diverted Paris with a song, the burden of which was “a machine that will kill us right off, and be christened la guillotine!” The doctor said no more about his idea, but, jocosely presented as it was, it nevertheless made an impression on the Assembly, who adopted it three years later. Meantime, they were beset by complaints from the Tiers Etat, who could not reconcile it to their dignity that the bourgeoisie should be hanged while the noblesse were beheaded. Let it be hanging all round, they said, and they would be satisfied; but why should nobles have their head cut off, while plebeians “swung at the [pg 689] lantern?” The grievance met with cold sympathy, however, until the times were ripe for reform, and it became urgent to find some more expeditious means of despatching both nobles and plebeians into the other world. Dr. Guillotin's proposal was reconsidered; an officer of the Criminal Court, named Laquiante, designed an instrument, which was approved of by the authorities and confided for execution to a piano-maker—a native of Strasbourg, we believe—named Schmidt. There was a good deal of haggling over the cost. Schmidt, in the first instance, wanted nine hundred and sixty francs, which was found exorbitant and refused. In consideration, however, of his having suggested some improvements in the original design, they consented to let him take out a patent, and to give him an order for eighty-three machines, one for every department in France, at five hundred francs each, and to be made as quickly as possible. They were three months quarrelling over the bargain, and all this time an unfortunate criminal, of the name of Pelletier, was lying in prison, waiting to be executed; when at last the price was settled and the first machine ready, he had the miserable distinction of inaugurating it on the 25th of April, 1792. The prejudice had been very strong against the new mode of decapitation, the clergy especially arguing that “the sight of blood would prove highly demoralizing to the people.” Samson, the executioner, was one of the staunchest opposers of the innovation on the same grounds, and also because of the shock the spectacle would give to many spectators. His letter to the Assembly embodying his opinions and experience on the subject is a curious bit of literature, highly creditable to the hangman, as indeed all that has come down to us concerning him seems to be. The humane desire to abridge the sufferings of the criminal overcame, however, every objection, and hanging was formally abolished and replaced by decapitation. The new instrument—most unjustly, as we see—was called the guillotine, in spite of a semi-official mention of it as Louison, and some efforts to make that name adhere. The worthy doctor was doomed to notoriety on account of his having first mooted the affair and made Paris laugh over it. Nothing secures immortality with the Parisians like a joke.
Apropos of the guillotine, we may mention that the Samsons were a respectable family of Abbeville, and held the office of “Executioner of the High Acts of Justice,” by descent, from the year 1722. Charles Henri Samson, who beheaded Louis XVI., came into office in 1778, and retired on a pension in 1795. He was succeeded by his son in his formidable functions, the latter having resigned the grade of captain in the artillery to undertake them.
Robert Cavelier De La Salle.
The pious hymns of the good and noble Marquette and his companions had not ceased to reverberate over the waters of the Great River, awakening the echoes of its banks and overhanging forests, when a bold and devoted spirit, fired by the fame of previous explorations, was meditating on the shores of Lake Ontario the prosecution of the grand work begun by the illustrious missionary. The world was startled with the news that the waters over whose bosom the missionaries and traders of Canada drove their canoes at the north, after meandering through the vast plains and forests of the continent, poured themselves into the Gulf of Mexico. This great physical problem was settled by Father Marquette and the Sieur Joliet, who, after having explored the course of the Mississippi for eleven hundred miles, returned to electrify the world by the reports of their brilliant success. But as yet comparatively little was known of this gigantic stream. The imagination of the most sanguine and the hearts of the boldest were appalled at the task; but it was a destined step in the onward march of religion and civilization. A Catholic missionary had gloriously led the way; a Catholic nobleman no less gloriously advanced to complete the work. This was Robert Cavelier de La Salle.
He was born at Rouen, in Normandy, of a good family, but the date of his birth has not been transmitted to us. He spent ten or twelve years of his early life in one of the Jesuit seminaries of France, where he received a good education, and he was well acquainted with mathematics and the natural sciences. His renunciation of his patrimony and his long sojourn among the Fathers of the Society of Jesus justify the belief that he was intended for the priesthood. Providence, however, destined him for a somewhat different sphere of labor and usefulness, but one in close co-operation with the great work of the church among mankind. He carried with him from the seminary of the Jesuits the highest testimonials of his superiors for purity of character, unblemished life, and exhaustless energy. By his own high qualities and noble achievements he has won a diploma for himself, inscribed on the brightest pages of our history, and more honorable than man can confer.
Emerging from the seminary full of youth, intelligence, and daring spirit, he joined one of the numerous bands of emigrants from France who came to seek adventures and fortunes in the New World. He came to Canada about the year 1667, and embarked with great energy in the fur trade, then the prevailing means of obtaining an exchange of European wealth and merchandise. His enterprising spirit soon carried him to the frontiers, and in his frail canoe he traversed the vast rivers and broad lakes of the continent, mingling with the aborigines, and acquiring information and experience of their modes of life, character, and languages. He explored Lake Ontario, and ascended Lake Erie. The activity of his mind and the restlessness [pg 691] of his genius could not be satisfied even with the vast and adventurous field of trade presented to him; for he shared largely in the prevailing ambition of discovering a northwest passage across the continent to China and Japan, an evidence of which he left behind him in the name of Lachine, which he bestowed upon one of his trading posts on the island of Montreal. He saw in that extended chain of lakes the link that united America with Asia, and indulged in the fond and proud dream that, as the discoverer of the long-sought passage, his name would be inscribed beside that of Columbus on the scroll of immortality.