y encouraging one another, prepared as martyrs
to encounter the last stern trial. They were all placed in one large
room opening into several cells, and the lifeless body of their
companion was deposited in one of the corners. By a decree of the
tribunal, the still warm and bleeding remains of Valaze were to be
carried back to the cell, and to be conveyed the next morning, in the
same cart with the prisoners, to the guillotine. The ax was to sever
the head from the lifeless body, and all the headless trunks were to
be interred together.

A wealthy friend, who had escaped proscription, and was concealed in
Paris, had agreed to send them a sumptuous banquet the night after
their trial, which banquet was to prove to them a funeral repast or a
triumphant feast, according to the verdict of acquittal or
condemnation. Their friend kept his word. Soon after the prisoners
were remanded to their cell, a table was spread, and preparations were
made for their last supper. There was a large oaken table in the
prison, where those awaiting their trial, and those awaiting their
execution, met for their coarse prison fare. A rich cloth was spread
upon that table. Servants entered, bearing brilliant lamps, which
illuminated the dismal vault with an unnatural luster, and spread the
glare of noonday light upon the miserable pallets of straw, the rusty
iron gratings and chains, and the stone walls weeping with moisture,
which no ray of the sun or warmth of fire ever dried away. It was a
strange scene, that brilliant festival, in the midst of the glooms of
the most dismal dungeon, with one dead body lying upon the floor, and
those for whom the feast was prepared waiting only for the early dawn
to light them to their death and burial. The richest viands of meats
and wines were brought in and placed before the condemned. Vases of
flowers diffused their fragrance and expanded their beauty where
flowers were never seen to bloom before. Wan and haggard faces,
unwashed and unshorn, gazed upon the unwonted spectacle, as dazzling
flambeaux, and rich table furniture, and bouquets, and costly dishes
appeared, one after another, until the board was covered with luxury
and splendor.

In silence the condemned took their places at the table. They were men
of brilliant intellects, of enthusiastic eloquence, thrown suddenly
from the heights of power to the foot of the scaffold. A priest, the
Abbe Lambert, the intimate personal friend of several of the mos