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Some time afterwards, having again refused to obey the order these commissioners of the Convention gave, to mow down with grapeshot the insurrectionists of Paris, he had been summoned before a commission, which would not have failed to send him to the guillotine, if General Bonaparte, who had succeeded him in the command of the army of the interior, had not used all his influence to save his life.
In Strasburg, Neumann, who had succeeded Schneider as public accuser, raged with redoubled fury. The guillotine was ever at work, was illuminated during the night time, and was the scene of the orgies of the drunken bandits. On the advance of the French armies to the frontiers, the whole country was pillaged.
The Federalist opposition, criticizing every act with bitterness and continually predicting ruin, found that under the "Jacobins" the country remained contented and prosperous and was in no more danger of atheism or the guillotine than it had been under Adams.
He was hurried to the guillotine, and met his fate with the greatest composure, assuring the public with a mysterious air, that had he lived four-and-twenty hours longer everything would have been arranged, and the troubles which he foresaw impending for Europe prevented.
He could not abandon power without abandoning himself and his supporters in the Assembly to the guillotine; and while continuing in power, he was compelled to witness deeds of atrocity from which not only his soul revolted, but to which it was necessary for him apparently to give his sanction. His cheek grew pale and wan with care. He could neither eat nor sleep.
The chaplain, stepping backwards, had come out in advance of him, in order to conceal the guillotine from his sight, but he had stopped short, for he wished to see that instrument of death, make acquaintance with it, as it were, before he walked towards it.
Did I? If you guillotine a man cut off his head, as they do in France, with an axe that falls like the monkey of a pile-driver the limbs quiver and stretch, and move almost naturally for a good while afterwards. I've seen the performance more than once.
You are quite well aware that under the pretence of being the leader of a gang of English adventurers, who never did the Republic of France and her people any real harm, I have actually been the means of unmasking many a royalist plot before you, and of bringing many persistent conspirators to the guillotine.
"Of what?" asked Nicholas. "Of being all alone," answered the cock of the walk. "So, if you had to recommence your robberies and murders, and, instead of prisons and galleys and guillotine, there were only cells, you would hesitate?" And he spoke the truth. A noisy burst of laughter, and exclamations of joy proceeding from the prisoners who were walking in the court, interrupted the meeting.
Sweden honored and rewarded Scheele and Bergman for their efforts; England received the intellectuality of Cavendish with less appreciation than the Continent, and a fanatical mob drove Priestley out of the country; while France, by sending Lavoisier to the guillotine, demonstrated how dangerous it was, at that time at least, for an intelligent Frenchman to serve his fellowman and his country well.
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