The Steam-Packet: A Tale of the River and the Ocean — page 126: what you’re looking at

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

—— THE STEAM PACKET. 93 the estate of the Count de Vendamme ; and the perpetrator of the dreadful action was the farmer’s nephew—a dissolute, wild, and incor- rigible young man of only three-and-twenty. He had been arrested a few days after the murder, and in course of time tried at Hazebrouck, where he was found guilty. The sentence was death. The culprit appealed unsuccessfully to the Court of Cassation, by which tribunal the former judgment was confirmed, and the day of execution had now arrived. The prisoner had been transferred on the previous evening from the prison of Hazebrouck to that of Mount Cassel, at which latter town the execution was ordered to take place, the crime having been perpetrated in the vicinity. At a quarter to eight o’clock the bell of the church began to toll. By this time the entire market-place was thronged with spectators ; and every window commanding a view of the scene was crowded with human heads. Five thousand pair of eyes seemed to have made the scaffold the focus to which all their visual rays were directed. But there was no improper conduct amongst that living ocean, which appeared as if it had come to dash its waves against the guillotine— that dread and mysterious lighthouse erected there to warn away the giddy mariner from the shoals and sunken rocks of life! There was a busy hum—a murmuring sound—like the whispering of myriads of voices ;—but there were no indecent cries—no querulous ejaculations —no profane talk—no ribald jokes—no snatches of flash songs—no loud and boisterous laughter. The deportment of the multitudes in the market-place below was as respectable and decent as that of the better classes who occupied the windows of the dwellings overlook- ing it. It was now three minutes to eight, and a breitiiless silence suddenly prevailed—like that sudden and awe-inspiring lulling of the breeze upon the ocean just before the wing of the hurricane sweeps over its surface. That silence was broken by the chant of sacred hymns; and the spectators in the hotel could now descry the funeral cavalcade slowly approaching from the farther extremity of the Grande Place. At first it seemed a dark line of persons, whose sombre uniformity was broken by the white robes of two priests ;—but as the mournful pro- cession drew gradually nearer and nearer, the eyes of our travellers could distinguish the tall and martial forms of the gendarmes with their drawn swords—the figures of the usher of the court which con- demned the prisoner, the gaoler, the commissary of police, the mayor, and other civic authorities—and amidst them all the person of that young and luckless man for whom all this parade, ceremony, interest, anxiety, curiosity, and assembly of multitudes had taken place. Oh! = Gomichbooks (E(0)