Of all the sights of that melancholy traverse, this the most disheartened me, whatever had been my carelessness of life before.  It was now almost scorn.  The thoughts fell heavy on my mind.  What was I, when such victims were prepared for sacrifice?  What was the crush of my obscure hopes, when the sitters on thrones were thus leveled with the earth?  If I perished in the next moment, no chasm would be left in society; perhaps but one or two human beings, if even they, would give a recollection to my grave.  But here the objects of national homage and gallant loyalty, beings whose rising radiance had filled the eye of nations, and whose sudden fall was felt as an eclipse of European light, were exposed to the deepest sufferings of the captive.  What, then, was I, that I should murmur; or, still more, that I should resist; or, most of all, that I should desire to protract an existence which, to this hour, had been one of a vexed spirit, and which, to the last hour of my career, looked but cloud on cloud?

Some of this depression may have been the physical result of fatigue, for I had been now four-and-twenty hours without rest; and the dismal streets, the dashing rain, and the utter absence of human movement as we dragged our dreary way along, would have made even the floor of a dungeon welcome.  I was as cold as its stone.

At length our postilion, after nearly relieving us of all the troubles of this world, by running on the verge of the moat which once surrounded the Bastile, and where nothing but the screams of my companion prevented him from plunging in, wholly lost his way.  The few lamps in this intricate and miserable quarter of the city had been blown out by the tempest, and our only resource appeared to be patience, until the tardy break of winter’s morn should guide us through the labyrinth of the Faubourg St Antoine.  However, this my companion’s patriotism would not suffer.  “The Club would be adjourned!  Danton would be gone!” In short, he should not hear the Jacobin lion roar, nor have the reward on which he reckoned for flinging me into his jaws.  The postilion was again ordered to move, and the turn of a street showing a light at a distance, he lashed his unfortunate horses towards it.  Utterly indifferent as to where I was to be deposited, I saw and heard nothing, until I was roused by the postilion’s cry of “Place de Greve.”

A large fire was burning in the midst of the gloomy square, round which a party of the National Guard were standing, with their muskets piled, and wrapped in their cloaks, against the inclemency of the night.  Further off, and in the centre, feebly seen by the low blaze, was a wooden structure, on whose corners torches were flaring in the wind. “Voila, la guillotine!” exclaimed my captor with the sort of ecstasy which might issue from the lips of a worshipper.  As I raised my eyes, an accidental flash of the fire showed the whole outline of the horrid machine.  I saw the glitter of the very axe that