It was the hangman’s valet, who had been dismissed from service by his employer, and who avenged himself in this way.

It was only a trick. Let us continue.

At Dijon, three months ago, a woman was to be executed, (a woman!). This time also the knife of Doctor Guillotine did poor service. The head was not completely severed; so the hangman’s valets took hold of the woman’s feet, and in spite of the victim’s shrieks, they pulled and tugged, and finally succeeded in jerking the head from the body.

At Paris, we return to the time of the secret executions. As they have not dared to behead on La Grève since July, being cowards and afraid, this is what is done. They recently took from Bicêtre a man who was condemned to die, Desandrieux by name, I think; he was placed in a sort of basket drawn on two wheels, closed on all sides, locked and bolted; then, a gendarme in front and a gendarme at the rear, with little noise and no crowd, the basket was placed on the deserted square of Saint-Jacques. It was then eight o’clock in the morning, scarcely day, but a guillotine had been newly erected for the public, some dozen or more little boys who clustered on the piles of stones about the unlooked-for machine; quickly they dragged the man from the basket, and without giving him time to breathe, stealthily, slyly, shamefully, they cut off his head. That, they call a public and solemn act of justice. Infamous irony!

What do the people of the king understand by the word “civilization”? To what have we come? Justice debased by stratagem and fraud! The law by compromises! Monstrous!

It is, indeed, a fearful thing for society to treat a man condemned to die as though he were a traitor!

But let us be just; the execution was not entirely secret. In the morning, on the cross-ways of Paris, they shouted and sold, as usual, the death-sentence. It seems that there are people who make their living in this way. You understand what I mean, do you not? From an unfortunate man’s crime, from his punishment, his agony, his tortures, a commodity is made, a paper which they sell for one sou. Can you imagine anything more hideous than this sou corroded with blood? Who is there who would pick it up?

These are enough facts, and too many. And are they not all horrible?

What have you to say in favor of capital punishment?

We ask the question seriously; and we ask it in order to obtain an answer; we put it to those who are well-versed in criminal law, not to literary haranguers. We know that there are those who take the good of capital punishment as a text for a parody like any other theme. There are others who advocate capital punishment only because they hate such or such an one who opposes it. For them it is a quasiliterary question, a question of persons, of proper names. These are the envious, who are as far from being good lawyers as great artists. Joseph Grippas are no nearer to the Filangieri, than the Torregiani to the Michelangelos, and the Scudérys to the Corneilles.

It is not to them that we speak, but to the men of law, properly so-called, to the logicians, to the reasoners, to those who like capital punishment for its beauty, its goodness, its mercy.

Now let them give their reasons.

Those who judge and condemn say that capital punishment is necessary. In the first place, because they must remove from society one who has already harmed it, and who can harm it again. If this is all, life-imprisonment would suffice. Of what use is death? You say that one can escape from a prison? Make your patrol better. If you do not trust in iron bars, how do you dare to have menageries?

No hangman is needed where the jailer is enough.

But, they say, society must avenge itself; society must punish. Neither the one nor the other. To avenge belongs to the individual; punishment, to God.

Society is between the two. Punishment is above her; vengeance, beneath. She uses nothing so great or so small. She should not “punish to avenge herself;” she should “correct to make better.” Transform the formula of those versed in criminal law into this, and we would understand it and abide by it.

The third and last reason is left, the theory of example. Examples must be made! We must frighten, by the sight of the fate reserved for criminals, those who are tempted to follow in their footsteps! That is almost word for word the eternal phrase of which every requisitory of the five hundred platforms of France are only more or less sonorous variations. Well! We deny, in the first place, that it is an example.