actory priests," writes Lebon, "monopolize the guillotine.. .[32165]
Day before yesterday, the sister of the former Comte de Bethune sneezed
in the sack." Carrier loudly proclaims "the pleasure he has derived"
from seeing priests executed: "I never laughed in my life as I did at
the faces they made in dying."[32166] This is the extreme perversity
of human nature, that of a Domitian who watches the features of the
condemned, to see the effect of suffering, or, better still, that of the
savage who holds his sides with laughter at the aspect of a man being
impaled. And this delight of contemplating death throes, Carrier finds
it in the sufferings of children. Notwithstanding the remonstrances
of the revolutionary Tribunal and the entreaties of President
Phelippes-Tronjolly,[32167] he signs on the 29th of Frimaire, year II.,
a positive order to guillotine without trial twenty-seven persons, of
whom seven are women, and, among these, four sisters, Mesdemoiselles de
la Metayrie, one of these twenty-eight years old, another twenty-seven,
the third twenty-six, and the fourth seventeen. Two days before,
notwithstanding the remonstrances of the same tribunal and the
entreaties of the same president, he signed a positive order to
guillotine twenty-six artisans and farm-hands, among them two boys of
fourteen, and two of thirteen years of age. He was driven "in a cab to
the place of execution and he followed it up in detail. He could hear
one of the children of thirteen, already bound to the board, but too
small and having only the top of the head under the knife, ask the
executioner, "Will it hurt me much?" What the triangular blade fell
upon may be imagined! Carrier saw this with his own eyes, and whilst the
executioner, horrified at himself, died a few days after in consequence
of what he had done, Carrier put another in his place, began again and
continued operations.

*****

[Footnote 3201: Thibaudeau: "Memoires," I., 47, 70.--Durand-Maillane,
"Memoires," 183.--Vatel, "Charlotte Corday et les Girondins," II.,
269. Out of the seventy-six presidents of the convention eighteen
were guillotined, eight deported, twenty-two declared outlaws, six
incarcerated, three who committed suicide, and four who became insane,
in all sixty-one. All who served twice perished by a violent death.]

[Footnote 3202: Moniteur, XVIII., 38. (Speech by Amar, reporter, Oct.
3. '793.) "The apparently negative behavior of the minority in the
convention