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Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 1. Edwards Henry Sutherland
Читать онлайн.Название Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 1
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Автор произведения Edwards Henry Sutherland
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When the sentence was read to him, Damiens simply remarked, “La journée sera rude.” Every kind of torture was applied to him to extort confessions. His guards remained at his side night and day, taking note of the cries and exclamations which escaped him in the midst of his sufferings. But Damiens had nothing to confess, and on the 28th of January he was carried, with his flesh lacerated and charred by fire, his bones broken, to the place of execution.
Immediately after his self-accusation in front of Notre Dame he was taken to the Place de Grève, where the hand which had held the knife was burnt with the flames of sulphur. Then he was torn with pincers in the arms and legs, the thighs and the breast, and into his wounds were poured red hot lead and boiling oil, with pitch, wax, and sulphur melted and mixed. The sufferer endured these tortures with surprising energy. He cried out from time to time, “Lord, give me patience and strength.” “But he did not blaspheme,” says Barbier, in his narrative of the scene, “nor mention any names.”
The end of the hideous tragedy was the dismemberment. The four traditional horses were not enough. Two more were added, and still the operation did not advance. Then the executioner, filled with horror, went to the neighbouring Hôtel de Ville to ask permission to use “the axe at the joints.” He was, according to Barbier, sharply rebuked by the king’s attendants, though in an account of the tragedy contributed at the time to the Gentleman’s Magazine (and derived from the gazettes published in Holland, where there was no censorship), the executioner was blamed for having delayed the employment of the axe so long.
There are conflicting accounts, too, as to the burning of the prisoner’s calves. It was said on the one hand that the garde des sceaux, Machault, caused red hot pincers to be applied in his presence to Damiens’ legs at the preliminary examination; but another version declares this to be a mistake, and ascribes the burning of his legs to the king’s attendants, who, seeing their master stabbed, are represented as punishing the assassin by the unlikely method of applying torches to his calves.
The torture of Damiens lasted many hours, and it was not till midnight, when both his legs and one of his arms had been torn off, that his remaining arm was dragged from the socket. The life of the poor wretch could scarcely have lasted so long as did the execution of the sentence passed upon him. A report of the trial was published by the Registrar of the Parliament; but the original record being destroyed, it is impossible to test the authenticity of this report. It fills four small volumes, and is entitled “Pièces Originales et Procèdures du Procès fait à Robert François Damiens, Paris, 1757.”
Ivan the Terrible, when his digestion was out of order, and he felt unequal to the effort of breakfasting, used to revive his jaded appetite by visiting the prisons and seeing criminals tortured. George Selwyn claimed to have made amends for his want of feeling in attending to see Lord Lovat’s head cut off by going to the undertaker’s to see it sewn on again, when, in presence of the decapitated corpse, he exclaimed with strange humour, and in imitation of the voice and manner of the Lord Chancellor at the trial: – “My Lord Lovat, your lordship may rise.” This dilettante in the sufferings of others is known to have paid a visit to Paris for the express purpose of seeing Damiens torn in pieces. On the day of the execution, according to Mr. Jesse (“George Augustus Selwyn and his contemporaries”), “he mingled with the crowd in a plain undress and bob wig,” when a French nobleman, observing the deep interest he took in the scene, and supposing from the simplicity of his attire that he was a person of the humbler ranks in life, chose to imagine that the stranger must infallibly be an executioner. “Eh, bien, monsieur,” he said, “êtes-vous arrivé pour voir ce spectacle?” “Oui, monsieur.” “Vous êtes bourreau?” “Non, non, monsieur, je n’ai pas cet honneur; je ne suis qu’un amateur.”
Wraxall tells the story somewhat differently. “Selwyn’s nervous irritability,” he says, “and anxious curiosity to observe the effect of dissolution on men, exposed him to much ridicule, not unaccompanied with censure. He was accused of attending all executions, disguised sometimes, to elude notice, in female attire. I have been assured that in 1756 (or 1757) he went over to Paris expressly for the purpose of witnessing the last moments of Damiens, who expired in the most acute tortures for having attempted the life of Louis XV. Being among the crowd, and attempting to approach too near the scaffold, he was at first repulsed by one of the executioners, but having explained that he had made the journey from London solely with a view to be present at the punishment and death of Damiens, the man immediately caused the people to make way, exclaiming at the same time: – ‘Faites place pour monsieur; c’est un Anglais et un amateur.’”
According to yet another story on this doleful subject, for which Horace Walpole is answerable, the Paris executioner, styled “Monsieur de Paris,” was surrounded by a number of provincial executioners, “Monsieur de Rouen,” “Monsieur de Bordeaux,” and so on. Selwyn joined the group, and on explaining to the Paris functionary that he was from London, was saluted with the exclamation, “Ah, monsieur de Londres!”
Among the minor celebrations of which the interior of Notre Dame has been the scene may be mentioned a mass said some twenty years before the Revolution for the broken arm of the famous dancer, Madeleine Guimard. One evening, when the fascinating Madeleine was performing in Les fêtes de l’Hymen et de l’Amour, a heavy cloud fell from the theatrical heavens upon one of her slender arms and broke it. Then it was that the services of the Church were invoked on behalf of the popular ballerina.
The interesting and graceful, though far from beautiful, Madeleine, was justly esteemed by the clergy; for during the severe winter of 1768 she had given to every destitute family in her neighbourhood enough to live on for a year, at the same time paying personal visits to each of them. “Not yet Magdalen repentant, but already Magdalen charitable!” exclaimed a famous preacher, in reference to Madeleine Guimard’s good action. “The hand,” he added, “which knows so well how to give alms will not be rejected by St. Peter when it knocks at the gate of Paradise.”
The Paris Cathedral has, strangely enough, been the scene, both in ancient and modern times, of dramatic performances. There, in the olden days, “Mysteries” were represented; and there, in 1790, a melodrama was played, entitled “The Taking of the Bastille,” and described as “specially written for Notre Dame.” This performance was followed by a grand Te Deum, sung by members of the Opera, though one of the first effects of the Revolution was to drive the best singers away from Paris. Soon afterwards, music, history, and religion were once more to be intermingled. This was in August, 1792. when the last day of the French Monarchy (August 10) was at hand.
The most imposing ceremony ever witnessed within the walls of Notre Dame was, as before said, the Coronation of Napoleon Bonaparte, at the hands of the Pope, on Sunday, the 2nd December, 1804. The Holy Father set out with his retinue at ten o’clock in the morning, and much earlier than the Emperor, in order that the ecclesiastical and royal processions should not clash. He was accompanied by a numerous body of clergy, gorgeously attired and resplendently ornamented, whilst his escort consisted of detachments of the Imperial Guard. A richly decorated portico had been erected all around the Place Notre Dame to receive on their descent from the royal carriages the sovereigns and princes who were to proceed to the ancient basilica. Already, when the Pope entered the church, there were assembled within it the deputies of the towns, the representatives of the magistracy and the army, the sixty bishops, with their clergy, the Senate, the Legislative Body, the Council of State, the Princes of Nassau, Hesse, and Baden, the Arch-Chancellor of the Germanic Empire, and the ministers of the different European Powers. The great door of Notre Dame had been closed, because the back of the Imperial throne was placed against it. The church, therefore, was entered by the side doors, situated at the two extremities of the transept. When the Pope, preceded by the cross and by the insignia of his office, appeared, the whole assembly rose from their seats, and a body of five hundred instrumentalists and vocalists gave forth with sublime effect the sacred chant, Tu es Petrus. The Pope walked slowly towards the altar, before which he knelt, and then took his place on a throne that had been prepared