Then there came out of the little square a great uproar and commotion, with shrieks, and under the shrieks a confused din.  In vain she pressed her face into the pillow and listened to the irregular, prodigious noise of her eyelashes as they scraped the rough linen.  The thought had somehow introduced itself into her head that she must arise and go to the window and see all that was to be seen.  She resisted.  She said to herself that the idea was absurd, that she did not wish to go to the window.  Nevertheless, while arguing with herself, she well knew that resistance to the thought was useless and that ultimately her legs would obey its command.

When ultimately she yielded to the fascination and went to the window and pulled aside one of the curtains, she had a feeling of relief.  The cool, grey beginnings of dawn were in the sky, and every detail of the square was visible.  Without exception all the windows were wide open and filled with sightseers.  In the background of many windows were burning candles or lamps that the far distant approach of the sun was already killing.  In front of these, on the frontier of two mingling lights, the attentive figures of the watchers were curiously silhouetted.  On the red-tiled roofs, too, was a squatted population.  Below, a troop of gendarmes, mounted on caracoling horses stretched in line across the square, was gradually sweeping the entire square of a packed, gesticulating, cursing crowd.  The operation of this immense besom was very slow.  As the spaces of the square were cleared they began to be dotted by privileged persons, journalists or law officers or their friends, who walked to and fro in conscious pride; among them Sophia descried Gerald and Chirac, strolling arm-in-arm and talking to two elaborately clad girls, who were also arm-in-arm.

Then she saw a red reflection coming from one of the side streets of which she had a vista; it was the swinging lantern of a waggon drawn by a gaunt grey horse.  The vehicle stopped at the end of the square from which the besom had started, and it was immediately surrounded by the privileged, who, however, were soon persuaded to stand away.  The crowd amassed now at the principal inlets of the square, gave a formidable cry and burst into the refrain—­

“Le voila!  Nicolas!  Ah!  Ah!  Ah!”

The clamour became furious as a group of workmen in blue blouses drew piece by piece all the components of the guillotine from the waggon and laid them carefully on the ground, under the superintendence of a man in a black frock-coat and a silk hat with broad flat brims; a little fussy man of nervous gestures.  And presently the red columns had risen upright from the ground and were joined at the top by an acrobatic climber.  As each part was bolted and screwed to the growing machine the man in the high hat carefully tested it.  In a short time that seemed very long, the guillotine was finished save for the triangular steel blade which lay shining on the ground, a cynosure.