ecital of the martyrdom of Bailly; I have
kept my word. I said that I should banish many circumstances without
reality, and that the drama would thus become less atrocious. If I am to
trust your aspect, I have not accomplished the second part of my
promise. The imagination perhaps cannot reach beyond the cruel facts on
which I have been obliged to dilate. You ask what I can have retrenched
from former relations, whilst what remains is so deplorable.

The order for execution addressed by Fouquier Tinville to the
executioner has been seen by several persons now living. They all
declare that if it differs from the numerous orders of a similar nature
that the wretch sent off daily, it was only by the substitution of the
following words: "Esplanade du Champ de Mars," for the usual designation
of "Place de la Revolution." Now, the Revolutionary Tribunal has
deserved many anathemas, but I never remarked its being reproached with
not having known how to enforce obedience.

I felt myself relieved from an immense weight, Gentlemen, when I could
dispel from my thoughts the image of a melancholy march on foot of two
hours, because with it there disappeared two hours of corporeal
ill-usage, which, according to those same accounts, our virtuous
colleague must have endured from the Conciergerie to the Champ de Mars.

An illustrious writer asserts that they conducted Bailly to the Place de
la Revolution, that the scaffold there was taken to pieces on the
multitude demanding it, and that the victim was then led to the Champ de
Mars. This relation is not correct. The sentence expressed in positive
terms, that, as an exception, the Square of the Revolution was not to be
the scene of Bailly's execution. The procession went direct to the place
designated.

The historian already quoted affirms that the scaffold on being put up
again on the bank of the Seine was erected on a heap of rubbish; that
this operation lasted some hours, and that Bailly meanwhile was drawn
round the Champ de Mars several times.

These promenades are imaginary. Those men who on the arrival of the
lugubrious procession vociferated that the presence of the old Mayor of
Paris would soil the Champ de la Federation, could not the next minute
force him to make the circuit of it. In fact, the illustrious victim
remained in the road. The cruel idea, so knowingly attributed to the
actors of those hideous scenes, to raise the fatal instrument on a heap
of rubbish on the ri