er were
allowed to sleep on. At 5 o'clock in the morning the executioner's
assistants arrived with everything that was necessary.

Then the casemate was entered. The four men awoke. To Nourry and Chopart
the officials said: "Get out of here!" They understood, and, joyful
and terror-stricken, fled into the adjoining casement. Daix and Lahr,
however, did not understand. They sat up and gazed about them with wild,
frightened eyes. The executioner and his assistants fell upon them and
bound them. No one spoke a word. The condemned men began to realise what
it all meant and uttered terrible cries. "If we had not bound them,"
said the executioner, "they would have devoured us!"

Then Lahr collapsed and began to pray while the decree for their
execution was read to them.

Daix continued to struggle, sobbing, and roaring with horror. These men
who had killed so freely were afraid to die.

Daix shouted: "Help! Help!" appealed to the soldiers, adjured them,
cursed them, pleaded to them in the name of General Brea.

"Shut up!" growled a sergeant. "You are a coward!"

The execution was performed with much ceremony. Let this fact be noted:
the first time the guillotine dared to show itself after February an
army was furnished to guard it. Twenty-five thousand men, infantry and
cavalry, surrounded the scaffold. Two generals were in command. Seven
guns commanded the streets which converged to the circus of the Barriere
de Fontainebleau.

Daix was executed first. When his head had fallen and his body was
unstrapped, the trunk, from which a stream of blood was pouring, fell
upon the scaffold between the swing-board and the basket.

The executioners were nervous and excited. A man of the people remarked:
"Everybody is losing his head on that guillotine, including the
executioner!"

In the faubourgs, which the last elections to the National Assembly had
so excited, the names of popular candidates could still be seen chalked
upon the walls. Louis Bonaparte was one of the candidates. His name
appeared on these open-air bulletins, as they may be termed, in company
with the names of Raspail and Barbes. The day after the execution Louis
Napoleon's name wherever it was to be seen had a red smear across it.
A silent protest, a reproach and a menace. The finger of the people
pending the finger of God.

III. THE SUICIDE OF ANTONIN MOYNE. April, 1849.

Antonin Moyne, prior to February, 1848, was a maker of little figu