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The cortège went by the "Gros-Horloge" to the "Vieux-Marché." Some one who saw Mme. Acquet pass, seated in the cart beside the executioner Ferey, says that "her white dress and short black hair blowing in her face made the paleness of her skin conspicuous; she was neither downcast nor bold; the sentence was cried aloud beside the cart." She died calmly, as she had lived for months.
The "Gros-Horloge" under which the tumbrils had passed; the "Vieux-Marché," where so many heads had fallen which the executioner owed to him; le Faubourg Bouvreuil, where the graves of his victims grew green; Bicêtre, the old conciergerie, the palace itself, which he could see from his windows, all these objects must have called up to his mind painful recollections.
The doors of the conciergerie did not open until seven in the evening. By the light of torches the faces of the condemned were seen in the cart, moving above the crowds thronging the narrow streets. The usual route from the prison to the scaffold was by the Rue du Gros-Horloge, and this funeral march by torchlight and execution at midnight in December must have been a terrifying event.
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