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| IMAGINARY DETAILS OF HIS EXECUTION. 247 
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fatal instrument on a heap of rubbish on the river bank, 
so that Bailly might in his last moments see the house at 
Chaillot where he had composed his works, was so far 
from occurring to the mind of the multitude, that the 
sentence was executed in the moat between two walls. 
I have not thought it my duty, Gentlemen, to represent 
the condemned man forced to carry some parts of the 
scaffold himself, because he had his hands tied behind his 
back. In my recital nobody waves the burning red flag 
over Bailly’s head, because this barbarity is not men- 
tioned in the narratives, otherwise so shocking, drawn 
up by some friends of our colleague shortly after the 
event; nor have I consented, with the author of The 
History of the French Revolution, to represent one of the 
soldiers forming the escort asking the question that led 
the victim to make, we must say so, the theatrical an- 
swer: “Yes, I tremble, but it is with cold;” but the 
more touching answer, so characteristic of Bailly; “ Yes, 
my friend, I am cold.” 
Far be it from me, Gentlemen, to suppose that no 
soldier in the world would be capable of a despicable 
and culpable act. I do not ask, assuredly, the suppres- 
sion of all courts-martial ; but to be induced to attribute 
to a man dressed in a military uniform, a personal part 
in this frightful drama, proofs or contemporary testi- 
monies would be’ required, of which I have found no 
trace. 
If the fact had occurred, its results would certainly 
have become known to the public. I take to witness an 
event which is found related in Bailly’s Memoirs. 
On the 22d of July, 1789, on the square of the Hotel 
de Ville, a dragoon with his sabre mutilated the corpse of 
Berthier. His comrades, feeling outraged by this bar- 
nal 
