that further suffering would result in death.
It is asserted that, during this cruel ordeal, the
chevalier avowed himself guilty of the offence
committed in Saint Catherine's cemetery.
Immediately afterwards, he was visited in prison by
a Dominican, Father Bosquier, whom he had
several times met at his aunt's, the Abbess
of Willancourt. He invited him to share his
last repast; but the worthy friar could not
eat.

"Why will you not dine?" De la Barre
inquired. "You will require something to sustain
you during the spectacle I am about to offer.
Let us have some coffee," he added, after a
quiet meal; " it will not prevent my sleeping."

A little before five in the afternoon, he was
made to get into a tumbril, in his shirt, witli a
rope round his neck, uncovered and barefoot,
with boards before and behind, inscribed
IMPIOUS, BLASPHEMER, EXECRABLY AND ABOMINABLY SACRILEGIOUS. Father Bosquier held a
crucifix, before him. An executioner, in the
same vehicle, held a lighted taper. Several
mounted bailiffs and ten brigades of archers,
some of whom had come seventeen leagues,
surrounded the victim. A prodigious crowd,
thronging in from the surrounding country, in
spite of the rain, blocked up the streets, filled
the windows, and scaled the roofs. " What has
given me the greatest pain to-day," said the
chevalier, during this terrible passage, "is to
see at the windows so many people whom I
believed my friends." But his emotion was still
greater on observing a young woman whom he
did not expect to meet on such an occasion.
"She here!" he indignantly exclaimed, sorrow-
fully fixing his gaze upon her.

It has been recorded that De la Barre refused
to make the amende honorable in front of the
porch of Saint Vulfrau's church; but an anonymous
chronicler who noted down all the details
of the execution, and who witnessed the horrible
tragedy, states that the chevalier knelt on the
first step of the portal, and pronounced the
required words in a firm tone of voice. The
executioners did not cut his tongue; they
merely went through with the pantomime of
doing so. Arrived at the market-place, De la
Barre, after the reading of his sentence, mounted
a vast scaffold without aid or effort, whilst the
executioner hung on a gallows, planted a few
paces off, a picture in which D'Etalonde, laden
with chains and with his wrist amputated, was
burning in effigy.

"Ah! poor fellow!" exclaimed the chevalier,
as he glanced at the odious painting. Turning
in another direction, he perceived an enormous
heap of billet-wood intermingled with fagots
and straw. "That, then, is my burial-place,"
he added, with heroic calmness. Addressing the
executioners, he asked, " Which of you has to
cut off my head?"

"I," said the Paris executioner.

"Are your weapons good? Let me see
them."

"Monsieur, we never show them."

"Was it you who beheaded the Comte de
Lally?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"You made him suffer long."

"It was his own fault; he was constantly in
motion. Place yourself well, and I will not
miss you."

"Never fear, I shall not be a child."

His confessor, who had never left him,
exlorted him to repentance, and promised heaven.
A slight smile then hovered on his lips. The
priest presented a crucifix to kiss, and gave
absolution. De la Barre, after kissing the
Christ several times, knelt with his face to the
butchery. The executioner took off the rope he
wore round his neck as well as the shirt which
had been put over his coat, cut off a part of his
hair, tied his hands behind him, and bandaged
his eyes. When ready to strike, he slightly
raised the chin with his hand, poised his weapon
several times, and at a single blow severed the
head, which rebounded a foot from the scaffold.
The trunk fell heavily back on the boards, and
a fountain of blood poured from the veins. The
instant the cutlass struck the victim, the crowd
clapped their hands. " Not one of those who
came to see the execution was touched, for he
showed too much hardihood," is the record of the
anonymous chronicler. They applauded again
when the executioner seized the bloody head.
He removed the bandage which covered the
eyes, showed it to the people, and replaced it
beside the body. A few minutes afterwards he
stirred it with his foot, to make sure that life
was completely extinct, whilst one of his
assistants ascertained that the pulse had ceased to
beat. They then let down with ropes the
remains of the victim who had been sacrificed to
such miserable passions, and placed them on
the pile with the " Philosophical Dictionary"
and several other works. They covered the
books and the body with straw, and then set
fire to the whole. During the night the executioners
broke up the bones, and next day the
ashes were carried away in a tumbril. The
unconsumed wood and all the scaffolding, abandoned
to the populace by the monks whose
perquisite they were, were sold by auction. The
money realised was spent " in drinking to the
health of the defunct."

An advocate, who afterwards attained
celebrity, M. Linguet, defended Moisnel, who was
still in prison, and gloriously gained his cause,
as well as that of two of the fugitives.
Voltaire obtained for D'Etalonde, promotion in the
Prussian army until his sentence was finally
reversed. On the 25th Brumaire, year II., the
Convention rehabilitated (i. e. reinstated to its
rank in society) the memory of De la Barre.
Long time after Duval de Soicourt's death,
amongst his other papers, the documents
relating to the chevalier's trial were found, and
burnt, by a man of business, who boasted of his
vandalism. But the facts were not to be so
suppressed. They occurred, let it be again
considered, not quite a hundred years ago.
Civilisation has surely made some progress during