e asked Madame Ragon.

"Nothing," she said; "it is only the tumbril cart and the executioner
going to the Place Louis XV. Ah! we used to see it often enough last
year; but to-day, four days after the anniversary of the twenty-first of
January, one does not feel sorry to see the ghastly procession."

"Why not?" asked the abbe. "That is not said like a Christian."

"Eh! but it is the execution of Robespierre's accomplices. They defended
themselves as long as they could, but now it is their turn to go where
they sent so many innocent people."

The crowd poured by like a flood. The abbe, yielding to an impulse of
curiosity, looked up above the heads, and there in the tumbril stood the
man who had heard mass in the garret three days ago.

"Who is it?" he asked; "who is the man with----"

"That is the headsman," answered M. Ragon, calling the executioner--the
_executeur des hautes oeuvres_--by the name he had borne under the
Monarchy.

"Oh! my dear, my dear! M. l'Abbe is dying!" cried out old Madame Ragon.
She caught up a flask of vinegar, and tried to restore the old priest to
consciousness.

"He must have given me the handkerchief that the King used to wipe his
brow on the way to his martyrdom," murmured he. "... Poor man!... There
was a heart in the steel blade, when none was found in all France..."

The perfumers thought that the poor abbe was raving.

PARIS, January 183l.

ADDENDUM

The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.

Beauseant, Marquis and Comte de
Father Goriot

Ragon, M. and Mme.
Cesar Birotteau

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