244 BAILLY. 



a long time with his nephew. The young man was a 

 prey to despair, but the illustrious prisoner preserved all 

 his serenity. The previous evening in returning from the 

 Tribunal, he remarked, with admirable coolness, though 

 springing from a certain disquietude, " that the specta- 

 tors of his trial had been strongly excited against him. 

 I fear," he added, " that the mere execution of the sen- 

 tence will no longer satisfy them, which might be danger- 

 ous in its consequences. Perhaps the police will provide 

 against it." These reflections having recurred to Bailly's 

 mind on the 12th, he asked for, and drank hastily, two 

 cups of coffee without milk. These precautions were a 

 sinister omen. To his friends who surrounded him at this 

 awful moment, and were sobbing aloud, he said, " Be 

 calm ; I have rather a difficult journey to perform, and I 

 distrust my constitution. Coffee excites and reanimates ; 

 I hope, however, to reach the end properly." 



Noon had just struck. Bailly addressed a last and 

 tender adieu to his companions in captivity, wished them 

 a better fate, followed the executioner without weakness 

 as well as without bravado, mounted the fatal cart, his 

 hands tied behind his back. Our colleague was accus- 

 tomed to say : " We must entertain a bad opinion of those 

 who, in their dying moments, have not a look to cast be- 

 hind them." Bailly's last look was towards his wife. A 

 gendarme of the escort feelingly listened to his last words, 

 and faithfully repeated them to his widow. The proces- 

 sion reached the entrance to the Champ de Mars, on the 

 side towards the river, at a quarter past one o'clock. 

 This was the place where, according to the words of the 

 sentence, the scaffold had been raised. The blinded 

 crowd collected there, furiously exclaimed that the sacred 

 ground of the Champ de la Federation should not be 



