ent to run away." The right of asylum was still maintained in Paris
in the enclosure of the Temple, as in the Middle Ages; in 1768, "poor
devils were sent to the galleys for having sold certain books, among
them the innocent satire of Voltaire: _L'homme aux quarante ecus_."

[Illustration: THE NEW HOTEL DE VILLE, AND THE PONT D'ARCOLE. After a
drawing by Libonis.]

The details of the trial and execution of Damiens, for his attempt on
the life of the king, give a better picture of the times than any
general description. Immediately after his arrest, his legs were torn
with red-hot pinchers, and these wounds were not allowed to heal. He was
confined in the Tour de Montgommery, in a circular chamber twelve feet
in diameter, almost without light and air, strapped down, without the
power of movement, to a mattress, the bottom of which was alternately
pushed up and let down by a jack underneath. His examination lasted
fifty-seven days; he was put to the question, "ordinary and
extraordinary," to discover the names of his accomplices, and finally
condemned to death by torture in very nearly the same phrases as those
which we have quoted in the sentence of Ravaillac. An enclosure was
arranged in the Place de Greve, surrounded by a strong barricade of
planks, pointed at the top, with elongations at the four corners for the
four horses who were to _ecarteler_ the criminal; in the centre was a
very solid wooden table, six feet long, four feet wide, and about three
feet high, on which he was to be placed, fastened down with iron plates
over his chest, stomach, and between his thighs, in such a manner that
his body should be perfectly immovable while his limbs were at liberty.
"The roofs of all the houses in the Greve," says the contemporary
_Journal de Barbier_, "and even the chimneys, were covered with people.
There was a man and a woman who fell in a certain locality, and who
injured others. It was remarked that there were very many women, and
even some of distinction, and that they sustained the horror of this
execution better than the men, which did not do them any honor."

From the memoirs of H. Sanson, one of the public executioners, the
following details are quoted by M. de Genouillac. "The _tortionnaire_,
who had charge of the pinchers, and who, by a singular mockery of
circumstances, bore the name of a great seigneur of the time, Soubise,
had assured his chief that he had procured all the implements indicated
in the sent