Capital Punishment:  nevertheless he now says, Death; a word which may cost him dear.  Manuel did surely rank with the Decided in August last; but he has been sinking and backsliding ever since September, and the scenes of September.  In this Convention, above all, no word he could speak would find favour; he says now, Banishment; and in mute wrath quits the place for ever,—­much hustled in the corridors.  Philippe Egalite votes in his soul and conscience, Death, at the sound of which, and of whom, even Patriotism shakes its head; and there runs a groan and shudder through this Hall of Doom.  Robespierre’s vote cannot be doubtful; his speech is long.  Men see the figure of shrill Sieyes ascend; hardly pausing, passing merely, this figure says, “La Mort sans phrase, Death without phrases;” and fares onward and downward.  Most spectral, pandemonial!

And yet if the Reader fancy it of a funereal, sorrowful or even grave character, he is far mistaken.  ‘The Ushers in the Mountain quarter,’ says Mercier, ‘had become as Box-openers at the Opera;’ opening and shutting of Galleries for privileged persons, for ’d’Orleans Egalite’s mistresses,’ or other high-dizened women of condition, rustling with laces and tricolor.  Gallant Deputies pass and repass thitherward, treating them with ices, refreshments and small-talk; the high-dizened heads beck responsive; some have their card and pin, pricking down the Ayes and Noes, as at a game of Rouge-et-Noir.  Further aloft reigns Mere Duchesse with her unrouged Amazons; she cannot be prevented making long Hahas, when the vote is not La Mort.  In these Galleries there is refection, drinking of wine and brandy ’as in open tavern, en pleine tabagie.’  Betting goes on in all coffeehouses of the neighbourhood.  But within doors, fatigue, impatience, uttermost weariness sits now on all visages; lighted up only from time to time, by turns of the game.  Members have fallen asleep; Ushers come and awaken them to vote:  other Members calculate whether they shall not have time to run and dine.  Figures rise, like phantoms, pale in the dusky lamp-light; utter from this Tribune, only one word:  Death.  ‘Tout est optique,’ says Mercier, ‘the world is all an optical shadow.’ (Mercier, Nouveau Paris, vi. 156-59; Montgaillard, iii. 348-87; Moore, &c.) Deep in the Thursday night, when the Voting is done, and Secretaries are summing it up, sick Duchatel, more spectral than another, comes borne on a chair, wrapt in blankets, ‘in nightgown and nightcap,’ to vote for Mercy:  one vote it is thought may turn the scale.

Ah no!  In profoundest silence, President Vergniaud, with a voice full of sorrow, has to say:  “I declare, in the name of the Convention, that the Punishment it pronounces on Louis Capet is that of Death.”  Death by a small majority of Fifty-three.  Nay, if we deduct from the one side, and add to the other, a certain Twenty-six, who said Death but coupled some faintest ineffectual surmise of mercy with it, the majority will be but One.