The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 119: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE GUILLOTINE 101 something sinister, — indeed, the guillotine. Now she no longer heard what the clergyman said; his voice was as a mere droning in her ears. The blood appeared to be rushing up to her brain with a violence as if to make it burst. Sparks seemed to scintillate before her eyes, her arms and limbs tingled to the extremities of the fingers and toes, as if being singed all over. She kept her looks fixed on the angle of the street, that angle to which every instant brought her nearer and around which the first glance would show her the guillo- tine. It was a horrible fascination; she could not help it. Something appeared to compel her to fix her eyes on that point, while something, on the other hand, appeared to try might and main to bend her looks in another direction. But the former power was the greater; yet between the two she was tortured horribly, the conflict being, as it were, in every vein, artery, nerve, fibre, muscle, and sinew of her frame. At length the angle is reached, the cart turns some- what, and behold! the two tall black spars of the guillotine, with the triangular ax shining ghastly in the sunlight, strike upon her view, the whole apparatus upreared above that ocean of human heads. ‘“My God, my God!” she murmurs, audibly, and at the same time Walden and Hernani, stricken by a mortal terror, sink down upon their knees at the feet of the Catholic priest. Kobolt remains sitting on the edge of the vehicle, but his countenance is now hideous in its pallor, and its workings are awful to contemplate. He is now beginning to look death more closely in the face; he is walking up to it. Ina few minutes more they will meet, they will touch. But Mrs. Ranger, how feels she now? O heavens! what. would she give to recall the past? What would she give to be enabled to live over again the last few months of her existence? Are her thoughts now reflected back to those: times when she was the innocent child, with the cherub cheeks and the flowing hair, disporting in the garden of fruits: and flowers? Does she think of the period when, as the cherished mistress of her noble seducer and in the glory of her beauty, she reclined upon the sofa, giving orders to her lackeys, and inspecting the rich merchandise which all the finest warehouses of London sent for her approval? Yes, oh, yes, she remembers all this, the bright days of her child- hood, the luxuries and the splendours which were the reward (C(O) nn) GDoOo <Sii