’My great-aunt was young and beautiful.  The executioner, while fastening her to the plank, had a rose in his mouth.  The Abbe de Noailles, who was below the scaffold, disguised, to give them, at the risk of his life, a sign of benediction, was asked how they looked.

‘"Comme si,’ he said, ‘elles allaient a la messe."’

‘The habit,’ said Ampere, ’of seeing people die produces indifference even to one’s own death.  You see that among soldiers.  You see it in epidemics.  But this indifference, or, to use a more proper word, this resignation, helped to prolong the Reign of Terror.  If the victims had resisted, if, like Madame du Barry, they had struggled with the executioner, it would have excited horror.’

‘The cries of even a pig,’ said Madame de Beaumont, ’make it disagreeable to kill it.’

‘Sanson,’ I said, ’long survived the Revolution; he made a fortune and lived in retirement at Versailles.  A lady was run away with between Versailles and Paris.  An elderly man, at considerable risk, stopped her horse.  She was very grateful, but could not get from him his name.  At last she traced him, and found that it was Sanson.’

‘Sanson,’ said Beaumont, ’may have been an honest man.  Whenever a place of bourreau is vacant, there are thirty or forty candidates, and they always produce certificates of their extraordinary kindness and humanity.  It seems to be the post most coveted by men eminent for their benevolence.’

‘How many have you?’ I asked.

‘Eighty-six,’ he answered.  ‘One for each department.’

‘And how many executions?’

‘About one hundred a year in all France.’

‘And what is the salary?’

‘Perhaps a couple of thousand francs a year.’

‘Really,’ said Ampere, ’it is one of the best parts of the patronage of the Minister of the Interior. M. le Bourreau gets more than a thousand francs for each operation.’

‘We pay by the piece,’ I said, ’and find one operator enough for all England.’

‘A friend of mine,’ said Beaumont, had a remarkably good Swiss servant.  His education was far above his station, and we could not find what had been his birth or his canton.

’Suddenly he became agitated and melancholy, and at last told my friend that he must leave him, and why.  His father was the hereditary bourreau of a Swiss canton.  To the office was attached an estate, to be forfeited if the office were refused.  He had resolved to take neither, and, to avoid being solicited, had left his country and changed his name.  But his family had traced him, had informed him of his father’s death, and had implored him to accept the succession.  He was the only son, and his mother and sisters would be ruined, if he allowed it to pass to the next in order of inheritance, a distant cousin.  He had not been able to persist in his refusal.’