of it

was lost in the raging fever of a nation, as it is in the fever of one

patient. Now, breaking the unnatural silence of a whole city, the

executioner showed the people the head of the kingand now, it

seemed almost in the same breath, the head of his fair wife which

had had eight weary months of imprisoned widowhood and

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

misery, to turn it grey.

And yet, observing the strange law of contradiction which

obtains in all such cases, the time was long, while it flamed by so

fast. A revolutionary tribunal in the capital, and forty or fifty

thousand revolutionary committees all over the land; a law of the

Suspected, which struck away all security for liberty or life, and

delivered over any good and innocent person to any bad and guilty

one; prisons gorged with people who had committed no offence,

and could obtain no hearing; these things became the established

order and nature of appointed things, and seemed to be ancient

usage before they were many weeks old. Above all, one hideous

figure grew as familiar as if it had been before the general gaze

from the foundations of the worldthe figure of the sharp female

called La Guillotine.

It was the popular theme for jests; it was the best cure for

headache, it infallibly prevented the hair from turning grey, it

imparted a peculiar delicacy to