The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 122: what you’re looking at

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

104 THE COURT OF LONDON Two men now ascended the platform of the guillotine. These were the executioner and his assistant. Stationing themselves near the plank, they waited for the gendarmes to bring them up the first individual who was to suffer. This was Mrs. Ranger. The authorities had deemed that it would be more merciful to put her out of her misery as speedily as possible, rather than suffer her to be a spectatrix of the decapitation of her companions first. Hernani wished her good-bye, and extended his hand. It was a good feeling which, at such a moment, prompted such a man thus to Separate in peace from the woman who might almost be regarded as the authoress of his own calamity, inasmuch as it was she who had bribed him and his accomplices to commit the crime for which they were all about to suffer. But it was only with a mechanical movement that she took the outstretched hand, for her senses were now all paralyzed by the horror of consternation and dismay. Kobolt and Walden followed Hernani’s example; their hands were also shaken for a moment, but in the same mechanical, un- conscious manner, and then Mrs. Ranger was conducted by two gendarmes up the steps of the guillotine, the Protestant minister bearing her company. Words have no power to convey the state of mind which this miserable woman experienced now, as she stood upon the threshold of another world; but we can scarcely say experi- enced, because she had no power of comprehending the condition of her own feelings. She seemed to be walking in a dream, yet a dream so horrible, so full of consternation, so fraught with utter dismay, that it was accompanied with the most poignant of agonies. The executioner and his assistant took her by the arms and placed her against the plank, which they had raised to a vertical position, and they proceeded to fasten her to it. Now she became con- vulsed with quick gaspings, and the Protestant minister, who was nigh, breathed a prayer in her ears. But it was as if he stood upon the seashore preaching to the waves when roaring in the rage of the tempest, for a similar storm was in her brain, and she heard him not. Suddenly, however, she gave a convulsive start, swept her eyes wildly around, and in that quick, lightning glance embraced the crowd, the tall spars in front of her, and all the principal features of the scene. connicloooKks CO