54 CHAP. VI. CRIMINAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL. return to his cell, a priest was sent for to prepare him for his doom. At present, in the provinces, all criminal offences are tried before military tribunals, qualified, as I have described this to be, by a mixture of civil judges and bourgeois. It is one of the peculiar characteristics of such tribunals, to order immediate punishment after conviction. In the present instance, the fate of the offender was well known, for his crimes were many, and manifest, and as the interval allowed by military courts between the sentence, and its fulfilment, is so very short, the administrators of the law had postponed his trial for five months from the period of his commitment, for the purpose of affording him an indulgent procrastination. This mode, although arising from merciful motives, is, I am aware, open to objection; but it would be unfair to comment upon laws, which prevailed in times of revolution, and are permitted only to operate, until the fine fabric of french criminal jurisprudence, which is now constructing, shall be presented to the people. To the honour of our country, and one of the greatest ornaments of the british bar, the honourable T. Erskine, in the year 1789, furnished the french, with some of these great principles of criminal law, which it was impossible to perfect during the long era of convulsion, and instability which followed, and ? which will constitute a considerable part of that great, and humane code, which is about to be bestowed upon the nation, and which will, no doubt, prove to be one of the greatest blessings, which human wisdom can confer upon human weakness. Its TOWN HOUSE, VI. 55 Its foundation is nearly similar to that of our own. The CHAP. great and enlightened genius whose name I have mentioned, has provided that the contumacy of one juryman shall not be able to force the opinion of the rest. After the court had broken up, I visited the town house, which, before the revolution, was the monastery of the benedictines, who, from what appeared of the remains of their establishment, must have been magnificently lodged, and well deserved during their existence, to bear the name of the blessed. The two grand staircases are very fine, and there is a noble garden behind. Upon entering the vestibule of the council chamber, formerly the refectory, I thought I was going behind the scenes of a theatre. It was nearly filled with allegorical banners, pasteboard and canvas arches of triumph, altars, emblems of liberty, and despotism, and all the scenic decorations suitable to the frenzied orgies of a republican fête. Thank God! they appeared to be tolerably well covered with dust and cobwebs. At the end of this noble room, seated upon a high pedestal, was the goddess of liberty, beautifully executed in marble. "Look at that sanguinary "prostitute," cried Mons. G, to me, pointing to the statue, "for years have we had liberty and bloodshed, thank "Heaven! we are now no longer free." Upon which, he wrote his name in the first consul's book, which was here lying open, upon a table, for the purpose of receiving the suffrages of the department. The laconic irony, and manner of the speaker, afforded me a tolerably good display of the nature of the blessings conferred upon the french, by their late political philosophy. From 56 CHAP. VI. CONVENT OF JESUITS. From this place I proceeded to the ci-devant convent of the jesuits, built by one of the munificent dukes de Bourbon. It is a magnificent oblong stone building. In the centre of the court was a tree of liberty, which, like almost all the other trees, dedicated to that goddess, which I saw, looked blighted, and sickly. I mention it as a fact, without alluding to any political sentiment whatever. It is a remark in frequent use in France, that the caps of liberty are without heads, and the trees of liberty without root. The poplar has been selected from all the other trees of the forest, for this distinguished honour, from a whimsical synonymy of its name with that of the people. In french, the poplar is called peuplier, and the word peuple signifies people. This fine building is now converted into an university of learning, and the fine arts. From the number of the students, I should suppose the fashionable fervour of study had not as yet reached Rouen. The professor of philosophy, with great politeness sent a young man to show me the museum of pictures, for which purpose the church of the jesuits, is at present used. There are several paintings in it, the only fine one, was a dying Jesus by Vandyke, which was exquisite. Upon my expressing my admiration, a young student near me said oui monsieur c'est très jolie." This misapplied remark, from an easy and natural combination of sound, could not fail of seeming a little singular as applied to such a subject, but every thing that pleases in France is très jolie. From this painting, I was, by importunity, led to view the other parts of the collection, which were composed of large pictures, by french masters; and so natural is local prejudice, every GUILLOTINE. every where, that I was almost held down, before the works of the best artists of Rouen, upon which, as I am at liberty here, I shall beg to make no comment. In the students' room, below, were some paintings curious, and valuable only, from their great antiquity, and a few good copies by the pupils. A picture was pointed out to me as a very fine thing, the subject was a fat little cherub, with a full flowing wig, fiddling to St. Francis, who from his gloomy appearance seemed not to possess half the musical genius of a dancing bear. Upon my return through the market place, I beheld the miserable wretch, at whose trial I was present in the morning, led out to execution. He was seated upon the bottom of a cart, stripped above to his shirt, which was folded back, his arms were pinioned close behind, and his hair was closely cropped, to prevent the stroke of the fatal knife from being impeded. A priest was seated in a chair beside him. As the object of my excursion was to contemplate the manners of the people, I summoned resolution to view this gloomy and painful spectacle, which seemed to excite but little sensation in the market place, where its petty traffic and concerns proceeded with their accustomed activity, and the women at their stalls, which extended to the foot of the scaffold, appeared to be impressed only with the solicitude of selling their vegetables to the highest bidder. A small body of the national guards, and a few boys and idlers surrounded the fatal spot. The guillotine, painted red, was placed upon a scaffold, of about five feet high. As soon as the criminal ascended the upper step which led to it he mounted, by 57 CHAP. VI. 58 СНАР. GUILLOTINE. the direction of the executioner, a little board, like a shutter, raised upright to receive him, to which he was strapped, turned down flat, and run into a small ring of iron half opened and made to admit the neck, the top part of which was then closed upon it, a black leather curtain was placed before the head, from which a valve depended, which communicated to a tub, placed under the scaffold to receive the blood, the executioner then touched a long thin iron rod, connected with the top of the instrument, and in a moment the axe descended, which was in the form of a square, cut diagonally, heavily charged with lead. The executioner and his assistants placed the body in a shell, half filled with saw dust, which was almost completely stained over with the brown blood of former executions ; they then picked up the head, from a bag into which it had fallen, within the curtain, and having placed it in the same gloomy depository, lowered the whole down to the sextons, who covering it with a pall bore it off to the place of burial. The velocity of this mode of execution can alone recommend it. The pangs of death are passed almost in the same moment, which presents to the terrified eye of the sufferer the frightful apparatus of his disgraceful dissolution. It is a dreary subject to discuss; but surely it is a matter of deep regret, that in England, criminals doomed to die, from the uncertain and lingering nature of their annihilation, are seen writhing in the convulsions of death during a period dreadful to think of. It is said, that at the late memorable execution of an african governor for murder, the miserable delinquent was beheld for fifteen mi nutes |