the principal wild beast; the queen
was beheaded on the 16th of October; the king's sister, Madame
Elisabeth, Bailly, the former maire of the city, Mme. Dubarry, the
former mistress of Louis XV, and the Girondins, on the last day of
October; the Hebertists on the 24th of March, 1794; and Danton, Camille
Desmoulins, and other leaders of the so-called moderate party on the 5th
of April. There remained only Robespierre, and a contemporary engraving,
from the collection of M. Felix Perin, of Paris, reproduced on page 59,
represents this dictator, "after having guillotined all the French," as
executing with his own hand the executioner. He stands with his feet on
the constitution of 1791; each guillotine represents a group of his
victims. "_A_ is the headsman; _B_, the Committee of Public Safety; _C_,
the Committee of General Security; _D_, the revolutionary tribunal; _E_,
the Jacobins; _F_, the Cordeliers; _G_, the Brissotins; _H_, the
Girondins; _I_, the Philipotins (for Philippeautins, the followers of
Philippeaux); _K_, the Chabotins; _L_, the Hebertists; _M_, nobles and
priests; _N_, men of genius; _O_, old people, women, and children; _P_,
soldiers and generals; _Q_, the constitutional authorities; _R_, the
Convention Nationale; _S_, popular societies." The ingenious draftsman
might have added still another, one for himself, for we are not
surprised to learn that he paid with his head for this work of art.

Another of these contemporary engravings, also reproduced for these
pages, from the collection of M. le Baron de Vinck d'Orp, of Brussels,
designed by Laffitte and engraved "under the supervision of Me
Poirier, avocat of Dunkerque," is dedicated to Joseph Le Bon, an
unfrocked Oratorian, who had caused to be put to death more than one
thousand five hundred persons; he had even established an orchestra at
the foot of the guillotine. The title of the engraving, _Formes
acerbes_, is taken from a phrase used by Barere in his defence of this
sanguinary ecclesiastic: "If Le Bon had employed certain _formes
acerbes_ [harsh methods]," he said, "he had at least given proof of his
devotion to the Republic." He is represented as standing upon a heap of
naked and headless corpses, between the two guillotines of Arras and of
Cambrai, drinking alternately from the two cups which he fills from the
red streams from the scaffolds. At his side, two Furies excite the
tigers to devour the bodies of his victims. But the invention of the