The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 123: what you’re looking at

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

THE GUILLOTINE 105 ‘‘ Just Heaven! it is no dream, then? It is a reality!” she cried forth, in a rending tone; and then, after a single moment’s pause, there thrilled from her lips a shriek as wild, as penetrating, as fully fraught with an ineffable agony as that which between thirty and forty years ago she had given when standing by the side of her mother’s corpse. But this shriek which she sent forth now on the scaf- fold of the guillotine in the great square of Geneva was one such as had never been heard before, a scream which those who did hear have never since forgotten, and which has often rung again and again in imagination through their brains. Oh, it was a fearful, fearful thing to be present there and hear that death-note of a human being’s wild and excruciating terror going up from the platform of the ghastly engine of destruction into the air all golden with the effulgence of the glorious sun! It was a dread and a shocking thing that such a wail should pierce the noontide air on such a day, while nature was smiling and happy and joyous all around. But what had this to do with the march of what is called human justice and the execution of man’s bloodthirsty law? Having given vent to that agonizing scream, the wretched woman fell into an immediate stupor, and though she was still alive, yet all consciousness had abandoned her. Being strapped to the plank, she was lowered upon it to a horizontal position, so that her head was received in the semicircular indenture in the lower half of the stocks; the upper half was instantaneously let down, and her neck was now held shut in the hole, her head hanging out convenient for the stroke of the hatchet. And that was soon given. The executioner loosened the string from the peg, down fell the axe with a whirring noise, the blow was struck, the head was severed, and with a great gush of blood it fell into the basket beneath. To unstrap the trunk, hurry it away to its coffin in the cart, and carry the severed head thither also, was the work of but a couple of minutes. Then one after another did the three “ fishers of men’”’ ascend the scaffold, and suffer death in the presence of the awestricken multitude. (C(O) nn) GDoOo <Si nin