The scandal of Montcharmont’s execution (1851)

Source : Le Courrier de Saône-et-Loire, May 10th 1851.

Le Courrier de Saône-et-Loire, May 10^th 1851. Claude Montcharmont, a tool-maker and poacher in Saint-Prix (in the region of Morvan), killed a gamekeeper and a police officer in November 1850. Since he was protected by the inhabitants of his village (one said that “it was nothing more than a killer killing another”), he wasn’t arrested for a full month, and yet when he was finally put on trial, the Assizes court of the Saône-et-Loire sentenced him to death on March 29^th 1851. Montcharmont resisted so violently when he was brought to the guillotine that the execution had to be rescheduled to the next day. The local newspaper Le Courrier considered the sentence a fair punishment for the murderer who had “terrorized” the neighborhood. Yet they described the scene with horror. Even the national press took an interest in the scandal caused by this execution, and Charles Hugo denounced the excessive force of the judicial system in the newspaper l’Evénement. Hugo was brought before the Assizes court of the Seine on June 11^th 1851 for this remark, and his father defended him, arguing in favor of abolishing the death penalty. His argument used, among others, the example of the execution of Morvan, the unfortunate poacher: “As a second argument, the public prosecutor has stated that the criticism in l’Evenement  went too far and was too forceful. Ah! Truly, gentlemen of the jury, look at what act provoked the “crime” that they dare to accuse the l’Evénement journalist of. Come close, and look at what provoked him. What! A man, a condemned man, a poor miserable man, was dragged to the town square. There, he found the guillotine. He resisted, he struggled, he refused to die. He’s so young, only twenty-nine years old…- My god! I know very well what they’ll respond. He’s a murderer! But listen! ... – Two executioners seized him, he had his hands tied, his feet tied, and he pushed back the two executioners. A horrible fight ensued. The condemned man caught his tied feet in the sinister ladder [leading to the guillotine platform]. His body served as a scaffold against the scaffold [scaffold (échafaud) was another term for the guillotine]. The struggle continued, and horror enveloped the crowd. With sweat and shame on their brows, the pale, terrified, desperate – I don’t even know for what -, executioners were breathing heavily. These executioners were weighed down under the public stigma, which should limit itself to condemning the death penalty – but which often wrongly punishes the passive instrument, the executioner – [movement] and thus the executioners make an enormous, savage effort. Force must remain on the side of the law, that’s the maxim. The man clung to the guillotine ladder and begged for mercy. His clothes were ripped, his bare shoulders were bloody; he resisted until the end. Finally, after forty-five minutes – forty-five minutes, if you will! [Movement. The Assistant public prosecutor signals his disagreement. Mr. Hugo starts up again] We’re quibbling about minutes: thirty-five minutes, if you will! of this monstrous effort that the executioners made, of this nameless spectacle, of this agony, an agony on the part of every individual there, you hear?,  an agony for the people there as well as agony for the condemned man, after this century of anguish, gentlemen of the jury, this poor man was taken back to prison. The people could breathe again. The people, who have the prejudices of ancient humanity and who are merciful only because they feel powerful, these people consider the man saved. Period. The guillotine has been vanquished, but it remains standing. It remains standing all day, in the middle of a dismayed population. And, at night, more executioners are brought in as backup, the man is tied up so tightly that he becomes inert, and, when night falls, he’s taken back to the town square crying, yelling, haggard, bloody, begging for his life, calling on God, his father and his mother – all of this because, faced with death, the man is a child again. [Sensation] He’s dragged onto the guillotine, and his head falls! – And a shiver goes through everyone’s conscience. Never has a legal murder occurred with so much cynicism and abomination. Everyone can feel it, so to speak, there’s a solidarity with this gloomy deed which has just been accomplished, and everyone feels in the bottom of their hearts what you’d feel if you saw, right in the middle of France, in broad daylight, civilization insulted by barbarity. At this moment, a young man let out a sharp scream, from the core of his body, his heart, his soul, a scream of pity, of anguish, of horror and humanity; and it is this scream that you will punish! In the presence of the horrible deeds that I just brought before your eyes, you will say to the guillotine: You’re right! And you will say to pity, to sacred pity: You’re wrong!” For more information: the Bibliography on Criminocorpus, and the complete text of Hugo’s speech at the Assizes of the Seine on June 11^th, 1851 can be found on the website Victor Hugo contre la peine de mort by Danielle Girard (from the académie de Rouen).

The scandal of Montcharmont’s execution (1851) (continued)

Source : Le Courrier de Saône-et-Loire, May 10th 1851.

The cemetery plot for execution victims

Source : Archives of the Parisian Police Prefecture, BA/887.

Report by the Gentilly Police commissioner on the burial procedure for victims of capital punishment, April 16^th 1877 (Archives of the Parisian Police Prefecture, BA/887) Sébastien-Joseph Billoir was sentenced to death by the Assizes court of the Seine on March 15^th 1876 for having killed and cut up a woman in Saint-Ouen. The day of the execution, the commissioner of Gentilly, whose job was to supervise the “burial patch for the condemned” [le carré des suppliciés]in the Gentilly cemetery, wrote this report criticizing the “indecent” way that Parisian executioners merely threw the bodies of their victims into a pit, placing their heads between their knees instead of respectfully handling the corpses. The report tries to be more reassuring regarding the burial practices outside of Paris. However, one only has to read the first chapter of Tu ne tueras pas by Albert Naud [no published translations in existence] to understand that decency and respect were certainly not present in 1951 in Arras. Of note is the fact that the report does not mention that after executions, doctors would often ask permission to use the corpse as a cadaver for experiments.

The cemetery plot for execution victims (continued)

Source : Archives of the Parisian Police Prefecture, BA/887.

From Place de la Grève to the Roquette

Source : Extract from Alexandre Dumas, My Memoirs, chap. 222.

Extract from Alexandre Dumas, My Memoirs, chap. 222. Under the Ancien Regime, public executions in Paris could be done in several places.The Place de la Grève was preferred because it was in the heart of the city near the town hall, l’Hôtel de ville. This was still the case after the Revolution in the first few years of the 19^th century. However, after the revolution of 1830, the “blood spilled” by those who had fought to overturn Charles X in July became a key argument to move the executions from the center of Paris to the edge of the city, the square of Saint-Jacques’ wall in 1832. Out of humanitarian concerns, but also because of the elites who felt disgusted by the spectacle of public executions, on November 29^th, 1851 a decree declared that the new place for execution would be the entrance to the Grande Roquette. Sixty-nine prisoners were executed there before the prison was closed in 1899. Afterwards, executions took place at the entrance to La Santé Prison (literally “The Prison of Good Health”) where the condemned were incarcerated while they awaited their sentence. The first to be executed was the parricide Duchemin in 1909. This move from executing prisoners at the Place de la Grève to the edge of town – the “walls”, and specifically, Saint-Jacques’ wall – had a symbolic value which was quickly recognized by abolitionists who interpreted the change as a way to hide the guillotine. In the preface to Dernier jour d’un condamné (1832), Victor Hugo appropriates this very argument: “In Paris we have gone back to covert executions. Since they have not dared do any beheading at La Grève since July, since they are frightened, since they are cowards, this is what they do. They took a man from Bicêtre recently, a condemned man – I think his name was Désandrieux – they put him in a sort of basket on two wheels, completely sealed, locked and padlocked; then with a policemen in front and a policeman at the rear, with little fuss and no crowds they delivered the package to the deserted toll gate at Saint-Jacques. When they arrived it was eight in the morning, barely daylight, there was a brand new guillotine set up and, for an audience, about a dozen little boys gathered on piles of stone round the unexpected apparatus; they quickly pulled him out of the basket and, without giving him time to draw breath, furtively, slyly, shamefully they had his head off. This is what goes by the name of a solemn public act of high justice. Unspeakable mockery!” (The Last Day of a Condemned Man, by Victor Hugo, Translated by Christopher Moncrieff, London: Oneworld Classics Limited, 1829 (2009): p.13). Hugo used the same argument during the trial of his son Charles at the Assizes court of the Seine in 1851: “I believed, I say, that the guillotine, which we should call by its true name, had started to apply justice to itself. I thought that it felt reprimanded and that it acted accordingly. It drew back from the Place de la Grève, from broad daylight, from the crowd, and it avoided being talked about on the streets - it no longer made a spectacle of itself. It began by “giving examples” in the most discreet way possible, at daybreak at Saint-Jacques’ wall, in a deserted area without an audience. It seemed to me that it started to hide itself, and I congratulated it for this sense of shame. So be it! Gentlemen, I was wrong, Mr. Léon Faucher was wrong. (The audience laughs.) The guillotine’s stopped this type of false modesty. It feels like it’s a social institution, like we say today. And who knows? Maybe it dreams, like some do, of its own return. (The audience laughs.) Saint-Jacques’ wall, now that’s degenerate. Maybe one of these days we’ll see it again at Place de la Grève, in broad daylight, in the middle of the crowd, with its parade of executioners, police and town criers, right under the windows of the Hôtel de ville – the very place where we dared debase it on February 24^th!” (Trans. P. Bass) Maxime Du Camp interprets the relocation of the guillotine similarly: Maxime Du Camp. Paris, ses organes, ses fonctions et sa vie jusqu’en 1870, Monaco, G. Rondeau, 1993, p.319-320, trans. P. Bass. « In June 1851, after the execution of Viou, the square of Saint-Jacques’ wall was abandoned and on December 16^th of that same year Humblot was beheaded at the roundabout at la Roquette, in front of the door of the prison where he’d waited to hear the decision on his appeal and his request for pardon. Since this time, twenty-one criminals have been beheaded in this spot, which we can recognize easily by the five slabs embedded in the ground meant to vertically support the “legs” of the guillotine. This spot seems to have been purposefully chosen. The law is given what it needs, but nothing more. If these terrible formalities give an example, the example is the opposite of what is desired, because article 26 of the Penal Code which says, “the execution will be in a public place that will be indicated on the sentence” hasn’t been repealed yet. So the execution needs to be public, but we’ve long passed the era when masters forced the public to watch such events at Place de la Grève, saying that it was a good lesson in morality for the servants. It’s obvious that the curious masses which hang about these painful spectacles are made up of the rotten and repugnant elements of society, and it’s impossible to ignore the numerous scandals that occur in this sordid underworld. Today, more than ever before, a certain reserve exists and, although the legislation is obeyed to the letter, everything else is taken from it for the sake of morality. The tall buildings of the adult prison and the juvenile detention center create an invincible obstacle for the unhealthy curiosity of the population and the tall, leafy trees also prevent executions from being seen. The guillotine, which is located right against the prison walls, is set back, so to say, and hidden as much as possible. Instead of going out and finding an audience to witness this supreme act that society is forced to carry out, the population is avoided, kept at a distance and the execution is hidden from it…” For more information: Wikipedia article on the Roquette prison and on the La Santé prison. See the biographical article on Alexandre Dumas on Wikipedia, and read the complete texts of Victor Hugo on the website Victor Hugo contre la peine de mort by Danielle Girard (académie de Rouen).

From Place de la Grève to the Roquette (continued)

Source : Extract from Alexandre Dumas, My Memoirs, chap. 222.

Vacher awakens (1899)

Source : Collection of the museum of living history (Musée d’histoire vivante), Montreuil, France.

Le Petit Journal. Supplément illustré, January 15^th 1899 (Collection of the Museum of Living History (Musée d’histoire vivant – Montreuil)) Joseph Vacher (1869-1898), found guilty for a dozen murders, was sentenced by the Assizes court of Ain on October 28^th 1898. He was executed on December 31^st of the same year. He had tortured, mutilated and killed a number of young adolescents, most of whom were shepherds. This serial killer, the “shepherd killer”, had escaped detection by moving to a different area in France after committing each crime. His walk to the guillotine was the subject of many descriptions and representations. Like the cliché-ridden representations published by the provincial press (cf. like the representation of this execution at Chartres), the illustrated newspapers wanted to bring the last moments of the condemned man's life alive for their readers, from the moment the prisoner woke up, to his meeting with the chaplain, to his ablutions and finally his walk to the guillotine. For the condemned man and for the reader, waking up was one of the most dramatic moments. When the condemned man opens his eyes at an exceptionally early hour, the presence of the authorities makes him immediately aware that his request for a pardon was rejected and that he must now prepare himself to go to the guillotine. Police Chief Monsieur Claude provides an efficient description of these last moments, which we can compare with his description of Troppmann’s execution. Extract from Memoirs of Monsieur Claude, Chief of Police under the second empire, edited by Sylvain Goudemare, Paris, Arléa, 1999, chap. XVIII. The three prison cells of La Roquette, p. 175-176, trans. P. Bass. “…The inmates at La Roquette are never in contact with someone on death row. By the time of the execution, the condemned man’s route is already determined, it’s the same for all of them. The shutters surrounding the courtyard are firmly shut so that neither the patient nor his gloomy cortege are visible. All inmates are ordered to stay within their cells. These mornings, La Roquette is in mourning. The route of the condemned man to the guillotine starts at death row and passes near the infirmary, which adjoins Vacquerie street. After having crossed the courtyard lined with arches, the patient arrives at a spiral staircase, which is reminiscent of the steps and the architectonic foundations of the Middle Ages. Oh, this spiral staircase! It seems to have been constructed to remind us of the most terrible times, the most somber and barbaric times. Its steps are so high that they must provoke intolerable anguish for the poor condemned men, who can only stagger under the horror that overtakes them. How many times this spiral of black stones must have been climbed (176 ->) by the tripping prisoners, on the edge of remorse, driven crazy by terror. After this staircase, the condemned person goes through a hallway of dormitory rooms and he goes downstairs again to enter a room called the Depot. It’s in this Depot where they conduct their ablutions on a little stool, which hasn’t changed in thirty years. Ah! If only this stool could speak! Once the condemned man leaves his cell to enter this bathroom of sorts, he’s no longer the property of the prison director, but of the executioner who, at this point, would have just finished preparing the machine and its blade outside. Monsieur de Paris (nick-name for the executioner in Paris) has an order that makes him the absolute master of the condemned man. According to this regulation, the head executioner presents himself to the director, who gives him custody of the patient. Once the executioner addresses the condemned man, with the chaplain and the two prison guards at his side, the executioner calls him by his name.   The condemned man usually remains silent. The executioner puts his hand on his shoulder and tells him, as if he had responded, « In the name of the law, you belong to me. » The executioner signs a receipt which he gives to the prison director while the condemned man gets ready to follow the executioner to the fatal machine, with only one step left to do in his bathroom before going to his death. This is where the executioner makes his arrangements and takes his precautions. In Paris, an executioner has adopted a simple system, which replaces the straightjacket. The condemned man’s hands are tied behind his back and his feet are tied together with a strap long enough to allow him to walk. A third strap ties his hands to his feet; this way, the patient walks perfectly straight and any other movement of his body affects his feet and makes him trip. On leaving the bathroom of the Depot, the condemned man only has several steps to take before finishing his gloomy excursion, which has not lasted very long at all.” Monsieur Claude inspired a report that the Parisian police sent to the Minister of the Interior on June 27^th 1870, suggesting that they introduce reforms (with the cooperation of executioners) for the procedures used during the last moments of the condemned, “as to abridge the length of their moral suffering” by lowering the preparation time from 30 to 15 minutes. Among the proposed measures, the Police Prefect agreed to do away with the straightjacket (which took a particularly long time to put on and remove) and to change the time when the condemned received a haircut to the moment of his sentencing. For more information: See the biographical article on Joseph Vacher on Wikipedia and the Bibliography on Criminocorpus.

Castaing’s last trip (1823)

Source : Archives of the Parisian Police Prefecture, DB/142.

The Atonement, engraving of Famous causes of all peoples, by Armand Fouquier, Paris, Lebrun, vol.6, n°248, p. 16. (Archives of the Police Prefecture, DB/142) Edme-Samuel Castaing (1797-1823), a doctor, was sentenced to death by the Assizes court on November 17^th, 1823, for having poisoned the Hippolyte brothers and Auguste Ballet. He was executed on December 6^th 1823. The fact that the victims and the accused were all members of Parisian high society and that the method of murder was poison were elements that contributed to public interest in the case and the large audience at the trial. Whether the execution was held at Place de la Grève or at Saint-Jacques’ wall, the condemned man in question would always leave his prison (either La Conciergie or Bicêtre) for a long parade through town, as was done for centuries in order to give an example to the people. The exhibition of the condemned man to the public was to show that the criminal was cut off from the social body by capital punishment. In his Memoirs, chapter XCI, Alexandre Dumas describes the parade and the execution of Castaing. “No, I won’t attend the execution, because, I admit, it would be impossible for me to tolerate such a spectacle. And yet, from Castaing to Lafourcade, the past twenty-eight years have been rich, despite this death sentence, which should reduce crime and yet does not! Alas! During these twenty-eight years, how many guilty people have passed down the road which leads from the Conciergerie to the Place de la Grève and which leads, today, from the Roquette to Saint-Jacques’ wall! On December 6^th, at seven thirty in the morning, Castaing was brought from Bicêtre to the Conciergerie. A moment later, the court clerk entered the prison and announced to him that his request for an appeal had been rejected. The Abbot Montès appeared behind the court clerk, Castaing began to pray, and he prayed religiously for a long, long time. During the whole time that he spent in the vestibule of the Conciergerie, and that the punishment was prepared, he did not speak a single word. Getting up onto the cart and glancing at the immense crowd that waited for him, his cheeks, which had suddenly become purple, slowly turned a deadly white. Only at the foot of the guillotine did he raise his head, which had remained sunk on his chest during the entire trip. Then, after looking again at the crowd, as he had done coming out of the Conciergerie, he got on his knees at the foot of the ladder, and once he’d kissed the crucifix and then the worthy clergyman who was presented to him, he climbed up to the guillotine with the support of two executioner’s assistants. When he was attached to the fatal plank, his eyes looked to the sky twice, quite visibly. Then, at two fifteen precisely, his head fell. Castaing had just had this deadly sensation that he didn’t dare describe to his audience when he touched his own neck. Castaing would be at the feet of God – if guilty, receiving his pardon; if innocent, becoming the accuser of those that had falsely accused him. At the last moment, he had asked to see his father to receive his blessing and this request was refused. He then asked for this blessing by letter. This letter was sent, but the response was not given to him until after it had been passer au vinaigre (disinfected). The paternal blessing was suspected to contain some sort of poison which would free Castaing from paying his debt to the guillotine. Everything was finished at two thirty, and those who wanted some comedy after this drama still had the time to go from the Place de la Grève to get in line for the Théâtre-Français. – The same day, December 6^th 1823, the play L’Ecole des vieillards was performed” (trans. P. Bass). For more information: See the bibliography on Criminocorpus or read the complete text of Alexandre Dumas on the website Alexandre Dumas et deux siècles de littérature vivante.

The execution of Berland and Doré (July 27th 1891): leaving La Roquette

Source : Collection of the museum of living history (Musée d’histoire vivante), Montreuil, France.

Le Petit Journal. Supplément illustré, August 8^th 1891, Collection of the Museum of Living History (Musée d’histoire vivant – Montreuil) Starting in the middle of the 19^th century, executions in Paris took place at la Roquette, next to the Grande Roquette, the adult prison. Once the door of the prison was opened, the condemned man, followed by the authorities that supervised the execution and supported by the executioner’s assistants and the prison chaplain, found the guillotine set up a few meters away.

The execution of Berland and Doré (July 27th 1891): the police report

Source : Archives of the Parisian Police Prefecture, BA/887.

Police report of the execution of Doré and Berland, July 27^th 1891 (Archives of the Parisian Police Prefecture, BA/887) Gustave-Georges Doré (1872-1891), a butcher’s apprentice in Courbevoie and Adolphe-Eugène Berland (1871-1891), a mattress-maker in Asnières, were sentenced to death by the Assizes court of the Seine on June 13^th 1891 for the murder of an elderly woman in Courbevoie. The report of the execution is a formal document that always contained the same information in the same order for each case. It started with the date and hour of execution, the requisition document of the Public Prosecutor’s department and the judgment of the Assizes court, and then recorded the police’s trip to the administrative center of the prison, where the prison registry number of the prisoner or prisoners in question were noted. Next, the report described the transport of the prisoner(s) to their cell and the announcement of their imminent execution, which was only briefly described unless an incident occurred. The last wishes and words of the prisoner(s) were then noted and, after the execution, the transport of the corpse to the cemetery of Gentilly was described.

The execution of Berland and Doré (July 27th 1891): the police report (continued)

Source : Archives of the Parisian Police Prefecture, BA/887.

The execution of Berland and Doré (July 27th 1891): the police report (end)

Source : Archives of the Parisian Police Prefecture, BA/887.

The execution of Berland and Doré (July 27th 1891): media coverage

Source : Archives of the Parisian Police Prefecture, BA/887.

Extracts from the newspapers Le Monde, July 25^th 1891 and Le Rappel, July 26^th 1891 (1891 (Parisian Police Archives, BA/887) In general, media coverage of executions was brief and relatively similar to the police reports of executions, especially after the mid-1800s, when the authorities and the elites started to show more and more distaste for the “spectacle” of the guillotine. The journalists of the mainstream press were mostly interested in two aspects of the execution: first, how the prisoner acted at the Grande Roquette as he awaited the response for his request for pardon, and second, the attention accorded to the immanent moment of death. Above all, it was important to publish the words, writing and letters of the condemned person to play on the contrast between the prisoner as a “monster” or killing machine and the prisoner as a human being with a family who merely wanted to escape his impending doom. Second, much more important than describing the technical proceedings of the execution, was the description of the crowd waiting for the spectacle to come. This type of description is present in the two articles above. While feeding public curiosity by surmising the date of the execution and by publishing numerous articles on the crime and the criminal, the press paradoxically criticized the very individuals who attended the execution. For newspapers that were against the death penalty, like Le Rappel, this fête de nuit (“nighttime party”) was yet another argument supporting the abolition of capital punishment.

The execution of Berland and Doré (July 27th 1891): the spectacle

Source : Archives of the Parisian Police Prefecture, BA/887.

Police report, signed by Félix, July 22^nd 1891 (Parisian Police Prefecture Archives, BA/887) The Parisian police prefecture was used to the large crowds who would often flood executions, so they took precautions, such as organizing surveillance measures for the areas around the Roquette as soon as people began arriving to “reserve their spot”. The police report above mentions a round-up of prostitutes and their procurers in the Roquette area, who didn’t have much of a trip to make to executions since they lived in the bouges (dives) on neighboring streets – the ship-owners of the area were, unsurprisingly, largely satisfied with this sort of measure. In all the articles against the publicity of executions, as well as in all the police reports, there were allusions to the no-good rabble of “girls” and their procurers who would come to wish farewell to one of their own, hoping that he or she would make a good last impression on the bascule à Chariot (slang, literally “Charlot’s see-saw” or “Charlot’s lever”, meaning “guillotine” – probably derived from the nickname of a Parisian executioner).

The execution of Berland and Doré (July 27th 1891): the spectacle (continued)

Source : Archives of the Parisian Police Prefecture, BA/887.

The execution of La Pommerais (June 9th 1864) by Villiers de l’Isle-Adam

Source : Le Figaro, October 23rd 1883.

An account of the execution of La Pommerais by Villiers de l’Isle Adam, Le Figaro, October 23^rd 1883. Auguste de Villiers de L’Isle-Adam (1838-1889), a French symbolist writer, habitually attended public executions. Edmond Couty de La Pommerais (1830-1864), a Parisian doctor, was sentenced to death on May 16^th 1864 by the Assizes court of the Seine. He was found guilty of poisoning his mistress and his mother-in-law with digitalis in order to inherit their money. This description of the last day of the condemned man, from his morning ablutions to his execution is a true picture of events. Villiers de L’Isle-Adam mentions the presence of doctor Velpeau, who is said to have waited ‘til the guillotine blade had dropped to ask the condemned to open his eyes – the question of how long the victim stayed alive after being beheaded by the guillotine remained a medical preoccupation for years. For more information: See the biographical article on Villiers de L’Isle-Adam on Wikipedia, the Bibliography on Criminocorpus, or read the text on the site Victor Hugo contre la peine de mort by Danielle Girard (académie de Rouen).

The execution of La Pommerais (June 9th 1864) by Villiers de l’Isle-Adam (continued)

Source : Le Figaro, October 23rd 1883.

Troppmann’s execution (January 19th 1870)

Source : Source: Extract from the Mémoires de Monsieur Claude, Paris, Arléa, 1999, chap. XXXI, p. 311-313.

Extract from the Memoirs of Monsieur Claude, Chief of Police under the second empire, edited by Sylvain Goudemare, Paris, Arléa, 1999, chap. XXXI. Troppmann’s last hour, p.311-313. Jean-Baptiste Troppmann (1849-1870) was sentenced to death on December 31^st 1869 by the Assizes court of the Seine for the murder of Mme Kinck and her six children in Pantin (northern suburb of Paris). Troppmann’s crime, trial and execution are generally considered as the first example of large-scale mediatization of a crime by the popular press. At this time, Le Petit Journal, a popular newspaper founded in 1863, reached epic levels of readership. It is even said that one of their journalists took the place of an executioner’s assistant to be as close as possible to the big event! L’illustration, another popular paper, described it as a “triumphant execution”. Monsieur Claude, the chief of police, bears witness to this spectacle by underlining the impressive presence of the “populace” (rabble, riffraff) during a time when the empire was declining and scandal was erupting over the murder of Republican journalist Victor Noir. Yet the spectacle of the execution was not only for and by the public, since the prison director himself played host during this event… The writer Ivan Turgenev found himself alongside M. Claude during the execution, and gives us this poignant account of the scene. The full text:  (The Essential Turgenev, ed. Elizabeth Cheresh Allen, “The execution of Troppmann”, trans. D. Magarshack (1958), Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1994. p791-811).

“I. In January of the current year (1870), while dining in Paris at the house of an old friend of mine, I received from Du Camp, the well-known writer and expert on the statistics of Paris, an utterly unexpected invitation to be present at the execution of Troppmann - and not only at his execution: it was proposed that I should be admitted to the prison itself, together with a small number of other privileged persons. The terrible crime committed by Troppmann still has not been forgotten, but at that time Paris was as interested in him and his impending execution, if not more, than it was in the recent appointment of the pseudo-parliamentarian ministry of Olivier or the murder of Victor Noir, who fell at the hand of the afterward surprisingly acquitted Prince Pierre Bonaparte. All the windows of the photographers’ and stationers’ shops exhibited whole rows of photographs showing a young fellow with a large forehead, dark eyes, and puffy lips, the “famous” Pantin murderer (de l’illustre assassin de Pantin), and for several evenings in a row, thousands of workmen had already been gathering in the environs of Roquette Prison in hopes of seeing the erection of the guillotine, dispersing only after midnight. Taken by surprise at Du Camp’s proposal, I accepted, without giving it much thought. And having promised to arrive at the place fixed for our meeting – the statue of Prince Eugene at the boulevard of the same name, at eleven o’clock in the evening – I did not want to go back on my word. False pride prevented my doing so…And what if they should think that I was a coward? As punishment to myself - and as a lesson to others – I should now like to recount everything I saw. I intend to revive in my memory all the painful impressions of that night. It will not be only the reader’s curiosity that is satisfied: he may derive some benefit from my story. 

II. A small crowd of people was already waiting for Du Camp and me at the prince’s statue. Among them was Monsieur Claude, the police commissioner of Paris (chef de la police de sûreté), to whom Du Camp introduced me. The others were privileged visitors like myself, journalists, reporters, etc. Du Camp had warned me that we would probably have to spend a sleepless night in the office of the prison warden. The execution of condemned criminals takes place during the winter at seven o’clock in the morning; but one had to be at the prison before midnight or one might not be able to push one’s way through the crowd. It is only about half a mile from the statue of Prince Eugene to Roquette Prison, but so far I could see nothing in any way out of the ordinary. There were just a few more people on the boulevard than usual. One could not help noting one thing, though: almost all the people were going – and some, especially women, running – in the same direction; in addition, all the cafés and taverns were ablaze with lights, which is very rare in the remote quarters of Paris, especially so late at night. The night was not foggy, but was dismal, damp without rain, and cold without frost – a typical French January night. Claude said that it was time to go, and off we went. He preserved the imperturbable cheerfulness of a practical man in whom such events did not arouse any feelings, except perhaps the desire to dispose of his sad duty as soon as possible.

Claude was a thickset, broad-shouldered man of about fifty, of medium height, with a round, closely cropped head and small, almost minute, features – only his forehead, chin, and the back of his head were at all broad. Relentless energy was evident in his dry, even voice, his pale-grey eyes, his short, strong fingers, his muscular legs, and all his unhurried but decisive movements. He was said to be an expert at his profession, inspiring mortal terror in all thieves and murderers; political crimes were not part of his responsibilities. His assistant, Monsieur J---, whom Du Camp also admired, looked like a kindly, almost sentimental man, and his manners were much more refined. With the exception of these two gentlemen and perhaps Du Camp, we all felt a little awkward – or did it only seem that way to me? – and a little ashamed too, although we walked along jauntily, as though on a hunting expedition.

The nearer we came to the prison, the more crowded the streets became, even though there were no real crowds as yet. No shouts could be heard, or even any overly loud conversations; it was evident that the “performance” had not yet commenced. Only the street urchins were already weaving around us; their hands thrust in the pockets of their trousers and the peaks of their caps pulled down to their eyes, they sauntered along with that special insolent, rollicking gait that can only be seen in Paris and that can be converted into agile running and jumping like that of a monkey in a twinkling of an eye.

“There he is – there he is – it’s him!” a few voices shouted around us.

“Why,” Du Camp suddenly said to me, “you’ve been mistaken for the executioner!”

“A lovely beginning!” I thought.

The Paris executioner, Monsieur de Paris, whose acquaintance I made that same night, is as tall and gray as I am.

But soon we came to a long, not terribly wide square bounded on two sides by barracklike buildings with grimy facades and crude architecture: that was Roquette Square. On the left was the prison for young criminals (prison des jeunes détenus) and on the right – the building for condemned prisoners (maison de depot pour les condamnés), or Roquette Prison.

III. A squad of soldiers was drawn up four-deep right across the square, and about two hundred feet from it, another squad was also drawn up four-deep. As a rule, no soldiers are present at an execution, but in this case, in view of Troppmann’s “reputation” and the present state of public opinion, excited by Noir’s murder, the government thought it necessary to take special measures and not to leave the preservation of law and order to the police alone. The main gates of Roquette Prison were exactly in the center of the empty space closed in by the soldiers. A few police sergeants walked slowly up and down before the gates; a young, rather fat police officer in an unusually richly embroidered cap (evidently the chief inspector of that quarter of the city) swooped down on our group so peremptorily that it reminded me of the good old days in my beloved country; but upon recognizing his superiors, he became calmer. They let us into a small guardroom beside the gates with immense caution, barely opening the gates, and – after a preliminary examination and interrogation – led us across two inner courtyards, one large and another small, to the warden’s lodgings.

The warden, a tall, stalwart man with a gray moustache and goatee, had the typical face of a French infantry officer: an aquiline nose, immobile, rapacious eyes, and a tiny skull. He received us very politely and benignly; but even without his being aware of it, his every gesture, his every word, at once showed that he was “a reliable fellow” (un gaillard solide), an utterly loyal servant, who would not hesitate to carry out any order given by his master. Indeed, he had proved his zeal in action; on the night of the coup d’état of December second, he and his battalion had occupied the printing works of the Moniteur.

Like a true gentleman, he put the whole of his apartment at our disposal. It was on the second floor of the main building and consisted of four fairly well-furnished rooms; in two of them, a fire was lit in the fireplace. A small Italian greyhound with a dislocated leg and a mournful expression in its eyes, as though it, too, felt like a prisoner, limped from one rug to another, wagging its tail. There were eight of us visitors; I recognized some from their photographs (Sardou, Albert Wolf), but I did not feel like talking to any of them. We all sat down on chairs in the drawing room. (Du Camp had gone out with Claude.)

It goes without saying that Troppmann became the subject of conversation and, as it were, the center of all our thoughts. The prison warden told us that he had been asleep since nine o’clock in the evening and was sleeping like a log; that he seemed to have guessed what had happened to his request for a reprieve; that he had implored him, the warden, to tell him the truth; that he kept stubbornly insisting that he had accomplices, whom he refused to name; that he would probably lose his nerve at the decisive moment, but that he ate with appetite, did not read books, etc., etc. For our part, some of us wondered whether one ought to give credence to the words of a criminal who had proved himself to be an inveterate liar, went over the details of the murder, asked ourselves what phrenologists would make of Troppmann’s skull, raised the question of capital punishment – but all this was so lifeless, so dull, so platitudinous, that even those who spoke did not feel like continuing. To talk about something else was rather embarrassing, even impossible – impossible out of respect for death alone, for the man who was doomed to die. We were all overwhelmed by a feeling of irksome and tedious – yes, tedious – discomfort; no one was really bored, but this dreary feeling was a hundred times worse than boredom! It seemed as though there would be no end to the night! As for me, there was one thing I was sure of: namely, that I had no right to be where I was, that no psychological or philosophical considerations excused me. Claude came back and told us how the notorious Jude had slipped through his fingers and how he was still hoping to catch him, if he was still alive. But suddenly we heard the heavy clatter of wheels, and a few moments later we were informed that the guillotine had arrived. We all rushed out into the street – just as though we were pleased!

IV. Before the prison gates stood a huge, closed van, drawn by three horses harnessed one behind the other; another two-wheeled van, a small, low one, which looked like an oblong box and was drawn by one horse, had stopped a little farther off. (That one, as we learned later, was to transport the body of the executed man to the cemetery immediately after the execution.) A few workmen wearing short jackets were visible around the vans, and a tall man in a round hat and white necktie, with a light overcoat thrown across his shoulders, was giving orders in an undertone…That was the executioner. All the authorities – the prison warden, Claude, the district police inspector, and so on – were surrounding and greeting him. “Ah, Monsieur Indric! Bon soir, Monsieur Indric!” (His real name is Heidenreich: he is an Alsatian.) Our group also walked up to him: for a moment he became the center of our attention. There was a certain strained but respectful familiarity in the way everyone treated him: “We don’t look down upon you, for you are, after all, a person of importance!” Some of us, probably just to show off, even shook hands with him. (He had a pair of beautiful, remarkably white hands.) I recalled a line from Pushkin’s Poltava:

            The executioner…

                Playing with his white hands…

Indric comported himself very simply, gently, and courteously, but not without a touch of patriarchal gravity. It seemed as though he felt we regarded him that night as second in importance only to Troppmann, and, so to speak, as his first minister.

The workmen opened the bigger van and began taking out all the component parts of the guillotine, which they had to put up within fifteen feet of the prison gates. Two lanterns began to move back and forth just above the ground, illuminating the polished cobblestones of the roadway with small, bright circles of light. I looked at my watch – it was only half past twelve! It had grown darker and colder. There were already a large number of people present, and behind the rows of the soldiers bordering the empty space in front of the prison rose an uninterrupted, dim hubbub of human voices. I walked up to the soldiers: they stood motionless, having drawn a little closer together and thereby breaking the original symmetry of their ranks. Their faces expressed nothing but cold, patiently submissive boredom; even the faces I could discern behind the shakos and uniforms of the soldiers and behind the three-cornered hats and tunics of the policemen, the faces of the workmen and artisans, all expressed virtually the same thing, merely adding some sort of indefinable amusement. Up ahead, from behind the mass of the stirring, shoving crowd, one could hear exclamations like “Ohé Troppmann! Ohé Lambert! Fallait pas qu’y aille!” There were shouts and shrill whistles. One could clearly make out a noisy argument going on someplace; a fragment of some cynical song came creeping along like a snake – and there was a sudden burst of loud laughter that was instantly taken up by the crowd, ending with a roar of coarse guffaws. The “real business” had not yet begun; one could not hear the antidynastic shouts everyone expected, or the all-too-familiar menacing reverberations of the Marseillaise.

I went back to a spot near the slowly rising guillotine. A certain curly-haired, dark-complexioned gentleman in a soft, gray hat, probably a lawyer, was standing beside me haranguing two or three other gentlemen in tightly buttoned-up overcoats, waving the forefinger of his right hand forcefully up and down, trying to prove that Troppmann was not a murderer, but a maniac. “Un maniaque! Je vais vous le prouver! Suivez mon raisonnement!” he kept saying. “Son mobile n’était pas l’assassinat, mais un orgueil que je nommerais volontier démesuré! Suivez mon raisonnement!” The gentlemen in the overcoats “followed his reasoning,” but to judge by their expressions, he hardly convinced them; the worker sitting on the platform of the guillotine looked at him with undisguised contempt. I returned to the prison warden’s apartment.

V. A few of our “colleagues” had already gathered there. The courteous warden was regaling them with mulled wine. They started to discuss once more whether Troppmann was still asleep, what he ought to be feeling, whether he could hear the noise of the people despite the distance of his cell from the street, and so on. The warden showed us a whole pile of letters addressed to Troppmann, who, the warden assured us, refused to read them. Most of them seemed to be full of silly jokes, but there were also some that were serious, in which he was admonished to repent and confess everything; one Methodist clergyman sent a whole theological thesis of twenty pages; there were also short notes from ladies, some of whom enclosed flowers – daisies and chrysanthemums. The warden told us that Troppmann had tried to get some poison from the prison pharmacist and wrote a letter asking for it, which the pharmacist, of course, immediately forwarded to the authorities. I could not help feeling that our worthy host was rather at a loss to explain to himself the interest we took in a man like Troppmann who, in his opinion, was a savage, disgusting animal, and all but ascribed it to the casual curiosity of civilian men of the world, the “idle rich”.

After a little more conversation, we just crawled off into different corners. During the whole of that night we wandered around like condemned souls – “comme des âmes en peine,” as the French say – went into various rooms, sat down side by side on chairs in the drawing room, inquired about Troppmann, glanced at the clock, yawned, went downstairs into the yard and street again, came back, sat down again… Some of us told off-color anecdotes, exchanged trivial personal news, touched lightly on politics, the theater, Noir’s murder; others tried to crack jokes, to say something witty, but that evidently did not work at all, provoking some sort of unpleasant laughter, which was instantly cut short, some sort of false approbation. I found a tiny sofa in an anteroom and somehow or other managed to lie down on it. I tried to sleep, but did not succeed, of course – I did not doze off for one moment.

The distant, hollow noise of the crowd was getting louder, deeper, and more and more unbroken. By three o’clock, according to Claude, who kept coming into the room, sitting down on a chair, falling asleep at once, then disappearing again, summoned by one of his subordinates, more than twenty-five thousand people had already gathered there. The noise astonished me with its resemblance to the distant roar of the sea: it was the same sort of unending Wagnerian crescendo, not rising continuously, but with huge intervals between the ebb and flow, the shrill notes of women’s and children’s voices rose in the air like thin spray over this enormous rumbling noise; in it was discernible the brutal power of some elemental force. It would grow quiet and die down for a moment; then the hubbub would restart, grow and swell, and in another moment would seem to be about to strike, as though wishing to tear everything down; and then it would retreat again, grow quiet, and swell once more – there seemed to be no end to it. And what, I could not help asking myself, did this noise signify? Impatience? Joy? Malice? No! It did not serve as an echo of any distinct human feeling…It was simply the rumble, the roar of the elements.

VI. At about three o’clock in the morning, I must have gone out into the street for the tenth time. The guillotine was ready. Its two beams, separated by about two feet, connected by the slanting line of the blade, stood out dimly and strangely, rather than terribly, against the dark sky. For some reason, I imagined that those beams ought to be more distant from each other; their proximity lent the whole machine a sort of sinister shapeliness, the shapeliness of a long, carefully stretched out swan’s neck. A large, dark-red wicker basket, looking like a suitcase, aroused a feeling of disgust in me. I knew that the executioners would throw the warm, still quivering dead body and the cut-off head into that basket…

The mounted police (garde municipale), who had arrived a little earlier, took up their positions in a large semicircle before the facade of the prison; from time to time the horses neighed, champing at their bits and tossing their heads; large drops of white froth appeared on the pavement between their forelegs. The riders dozed somberly beneath their bearskin caps, which they had pulled down over their eyes. The lines of the soldiers cutting across the square and holding back the crowds had retreated farther: now there were not two hundred but three hundred feet of empty space before the prison.

I went up to one of those lines and gazed at the people crammed behind it for a long time; their shouting actually was elemental, that is, senseless. I still remember the face of a workman, a young fellow of about twenty: he stood there grinning, with his eyes trained on the ground, just as though he were thinking of something amusing, then he would suddenly throw back his head, open his mouth wide, and begin to shout in a drawn-out voice, without words, and then his head would sink again and he would start to grin again. What was going on inside that man? Why had he consigned himself to such a painfully sleepless night, to an almost eight-hour-long immobility?

My ears did not catch any snatches of conversation; occasionally, through the unceasing uproar, would come the piercing cry of a hawker selling a leaflet about Troppmann, his life, his execution, and even his “last words”. .. Or an argument would break out again somewhere far away, or there would be a hideous burst of laughter, or some women would start screaming…This time I heard the Marseillaise, but it was sung by just five or six men, with interruptions, too, at that – the Marseillaise becomes significant only when thousands are signing it. “A bas Pierre Bonaparte!” someone shouted at the top of his voice… "Oo-oo-ah-ah!" the crowd responded in an incoherent roar. In one place, the shouts assumed the measured rhythm of a polka: one-two-three-four! one-two-three-four! To the well-known tune des lampions!

A heavy, rank breath of alcoholic fumes came from the crowd. A great deal of wine had been consumed by al those bodies; there were a great many drunken men there. Not for nothing did the taverns glow with reddish lights in the general background of this scene. The night had grown pitch-dark; the sky had become totally overcast, turning black. There were small clumps on the sparse trees, which loomed indistinctly in the darkness, like phantoms: there were street urchins who had climbed the trees and were sitting among the branches, whistling and screeching like birds. One of them had fallen and, it is said, was fatally injured, having broken his spine; but he only aroused loud laughter, and only for a short time.

On my way back to the warden’s apartment, I passed the guillotine and saw the executioner, surrounded by a small crowd of inquisitive people, on its platform. He was performing a “rehearsal” for them; he threw down the hinged plank to which the criminal was fastened and whose tip touched the semicircular slot between the beams as it fell; he released the knife, which came down heavily and smoothly with a rapid, hollow roar, and so forth. I did not stop to watch this “rehearsal,” that is to say, I did not climb onto the platform; the feeling of having committed some unknown transgression, the sense of some secret shame, was growing stronger and stronger inside me…Perhaps this feeling accounts for the fact that the horses harnessed to the vans, calmly chewing the oats in their nosebags, at that moment seemed to me to be the only innocent creatures among us all.

I went back to the solitude of my little sofa once more, and once more began to listen to the roar of the breakers on the seashore…

VII. Contrary to the general assumption, the last hour of waiting passes much more quickly than the first, and even more quickly than the second or third…So it was now. We were surprised by the news that it had struck six, and that only one more hour remained to the moment of execution. We were supposed to go to Troppmann’s cell in exactly half an hour, at half past six. All traces of sleep promptly disappeared from every face. I do not know what the others were feeling, but I felt terribly sick at heart. A new figure appeared: a short, gray-haired man with a thin little face, the priest, flashed by wearing his long, black cassock, along with the ribbon of the Légion d’honneur and a low, wide-brimmed hat. The warden had prepared a sort of breakfast for us, une collation; huge cups of chocolate appeared on the round table in the drawing room…I did not even go near it, although our hospitable host advised me to fortify myself “because the morning air might be harmful.” Eating food at that moment seemed to me…disgusting. Good Lord – a feast at such a time! “I have no right,” I said to myself for the hundredth time since the beginning of that night.

“Is he still asleep?” one of us asked, sipping his chocolate.

(They were all speaking about Troppmann without referring to him by name; there could be no question of any other him.)

“Yes, he’s asleep,” replied the warden.

“In spite of this terrible racket?”

(The noise had grown extraordinarily loud, in fact, turning into a kind of hoarse roar; the menacing chorus no longer rose in a crescendo – it rumbled victoriously, cheerfully.)

“His cell is behind three walls,” the warden observed.

Claude, whom the warden clearly treated as the most important person among us, looked at his watch and said: “Twenty past six.”

We all must have shuddered inwardly, I expect, but we just put on our hats and set off noisily after our guide.

“Where are you dining today?” a reporter asked in a loud voice.

But that struck us all as a little too unnatural.

VIII. We went out into the large prison courtyard; there, in the corner on the right, a sort of roll call took place in front of a half-closed door; then we were shown into a tall, narrow, entirely empty room with a leather stool in the center.

“It is here that la toilette du condamné takes place,” Du Camp whispered to me.

We did not all fit in: there were about ten of us, including the warden, the priest, Claude, and his assistant. During the next two or three minutes we spent in that room (some kind of official documents were being signed there), the thought that we had no right to do what we were doing, that by being present with an air of hypocritical solemnity at the killing of a fellow human being we were performing some odious, iniquitous farce – that thought flashed through my mind for the last time; as soon as we set off, following Claude again along the wide stone corridor dimly lit by two nightlights, I no longer felt anything except that now – now – this minute – this second… We rapidly climbed two staircases, entered another corridor, walked through it, went down a narrow spiral staircase, and found ourselves before an iron door…Here!

The warden unlocked the door cautiously. It opened quietly – and we all slowly and silently filed into a rather spacious room with yellow walls, a high barred window, and a crumpled bed on which no one was lying…The steady glow of a large night-light illuminated all the objects in the room quite clearly.

I was standing a little behind the rest and, as I recall, I involuntarily squinted; however, I immediately saw a young, dark-haired, dark-eyed person diagonally opposite me, gazing at us all with huge, round eyes that moved slowly from left to right. It was Troppmann. He had woken up just before our arrival. He was standing in front of the table on which had just written a farewell (albeit rather trivial) letter to his mother. Claude took off his hat and went up to him.

“Troppmann,” he said in his dry, soft, but peremptory voice, “we have come to inform you that your appeal for a reprieve has been denied and that the hour of retribution has come for you.”

Troppmann turned his eyes toward him, but they were no longer “huge”; he regarded him calmly, almost somnolently, and did not utter a word.

“My child,” the priest exclaimed hollowly, going up to him from the other side, “du courage!”

Troppmann looked at him exactly as he had looked at Claude.

“I knew he wouldn’t be afraid,” Claude declared in a confident tone, addressing us all. “Now, when he has gotten over the first shock (le premier choc), I can count on him.”

(Thus does a schoolmaster wishing to cajole his pupil tell him beforehand that he is  “an intelligent fellow.”)

“Oh, I’m not afraid (Oh, je n’ai pas peur!),” said Troppmann, addressing Claude again. “I’m not afraid!”

His voice, a pleasant, youthful baritone, was perfectly steady.

The priest took a small bottle out of his pocket.

“Won’t you have a drop of wine, my child?”

“Thank you, no,” Troppmann replied politely, with a slight bow.

Claude addressed him again.

“Do you insist that you are not guilty of the crime for which you’ve been condemned?”

“I did not strike the blow! (Je n’ai pas frappe!)”

“But…?” the warden interjected.

“I did not strike the blow!”

(For some time, as everyone knows, contrary to his former depositions, Troppmann had asserted that he did take the Kink family to the place where they had been butchered, but that they were murdered by his accomplices, that even the injury to his hand was the result of his attempt to save one of the small children. However, he had told more lies during his trial than most criminals had done before him.)

“And do you still assert that you had accomplices?”

“Yes.”

“You can’t name them, can you?”

“I can’t and I won’t. I won’t.” Troppmann raised his voice, and his face became flushed. It seemed as though he were getting angry.

“Oh, all right, all right,” Claude responded hurriedly, as though implying that he had put his questions only as a formality and that something else had to be done now…

Troppmann had to undress.
Two guards went up to him and began taking off his prison straightjacket (camisole de force), a kind of blouse made of coarse bluish cloth that had belts and buckles in back and long, sewn-up sleeves, the ends of which had strong pieces of tape attached to the waist and thighs. Troppmann stood sideways, within two feet of me. Nothing could have prevented me from closely scrutinizing his face. It could have been described as handsome except for the unpleasantly full lips, which made his mouth protrude a little too much and turn upward, funnel-like, similar to an animal’s, and for the two rows of bad, sparse teeth fanned behind his lips. He had thick, slightly wavy dark hair, full eyebrows, expressive, bulging eyes, a broad, clear forehead, a regular, slightly aquiline nose, and little curls of dark down on his chin…If you had happened to meet such a man outside the prison and not in such surroundings, he would doubtlessly have made a good impression on you. Hundreds of such faces could be seen among young factory workers, pupils in public institutions, etc. Troppmann was of medium height, and had a youthfully thin, slender build. He looked to me like an overgrown boy, and, indeed, he was not yet twenty. He had a natural, healthy, slightly rosy complexion; he did not turn pale even upon our entrance….

There could be no doubt that he really had slept all night. He did not raise his eyes, and his breathing was regular and deep, like a man walking up a steep hill. He shook his hair once or twice, as though wishing to dismiss a troublesome thought, tossed back his head, threw a quick glance at the ceiling, and heaved a hardly perceptible sigh. With the exception of those almost instantaneous movements, nothing in him disclosed – I won’t say fear, but even agitation or anxiety. We were all much paler and more agitated than he, I am sure. When his hands were released from the sewn-up sleeves of the straitjacket, he held his straitjacket up in front of him, by his chest, with a pleased smile while it was being undone at the back; little children behave like that when they are being undressed. Then he took his shirt off himself, put on another clean one, and carefully buttoned the neckband …It was strange to see the free, sweeping movements of that naked body, to see those bare limbs against the yellowish background of the prison wall…

Next he bent down and put on his boots, knocking the heels and soles loudly against the floor and the wall to make sure his feet got into them properly. He did all this cheerfully, without any sign of constraint – almost joyfully, as though he had just been invited to go for a walk. He was silent – and we were silent. We merely exchanged glances, unintentionally shrugging our shoulders in surprise. We were all struck by the simplicity of his movements, a simplicity which, like any other calm and natural manifestation of life, amounted almost to elegance. One member of our group, who met me by accident later that day, told me that all during our stay in Troppmann’s cell he had kept imagining that it was not 1870 but 1794, that we were not ordinary citizens but Jacobins, and that we were taking to his execution not a common murderer but a marquis legitimist, un ci-devant, un talon rouge, monsieur !

It has been observed that when people sentenced to death have their sentences read to them, they either lapse into complete insensibility and, as it were, die and decompose beforehand, or show off and brazen it out, or else surrender themselves to despair, weeping, trembling, and begging for mercy…Troppmann did not fall into any of these categories – and that was why he puzzled even Claude himself.

Let me say, by the way, that if Troppmann had begun to howl and weep, my nerves would certainly not have withstood it and I would have run away. But at the sight of that composure, that simplicity and seeming modesty, all the feelings in me – the feelings of disgust for a pitiless murderer, a monster who cut the throats of little children while they were crying Maman! Maman!, the feeling of compassion in the end for a man whom death was about to swallow up – disappeared and dissolved in a feeling of astonishment. What was sustaining Troppmann? Was it the fact that, although he did not show off, he did “cut a figure” before spectators, giving us his last performance? Or was it innate fearlessness or vanity aroused by Claude’s words, the pride of the struggle that had to be waged to the end – or something else, some as yet undivined feeling ?...He took that secret to the grave with him. Some people are still convinced that Troppmann was not in his right mind. (I mentioned earlier the lawyer in the white hat, whom, incidentally, I never saw again.) The pointlessness – one might almost say the absurdity – of the annihilation of the entire Kink family serves to confirm that point of view to a certain extent.

IX. But presently he finished with his boots, straightened up, and shook himself – ready! They put the prison jacket on him again. Claude asked us to go out and leave Troppmann alone with the priest. We had to wait in the corridor for less than two minutes before his small figure appeared among us, his head fearlessly held high. His religious feelings were not very strong, and he probably carried out the last rite of confession, conducted by the priest to absolve his sins, merely as a formality. All of our group, with Troppmann in the center, immediately went up the narrow spiral staircase we had descended a quarter of an hour before, and – disappeared in pitch darkness: the night-light on the staircase had gone out. It was an awful moment. We all rushed upstairs: we could hear the rapid, harsh clatter of our feet on the iron steps; we trod on one another’s heels; we bumped against one another’s shoulders; one of us had his hat knocked off. Someone behind me angrily shouted: “Mais sacré-dieu! Light a candle! Let’s have some light!” And there among us, together with us in the pitch darkness, was our victim, our prey, that unfortunate man – and which of those who were pushing and scrambling upstairs was he? Would it not occur to him to take advantage of the darkness and, given all his agility and the determination of despair, to escape – where? Anywhere – to some remote corner of the prison – and just smash his head against a wall there! At least he would have killed himself…

I do not know whether these “apprehensions” occurred to anyone else…But they appeared to be unfounded. Our whole group, with the small figure in the middle, emerged from the inner recess of the staircase into the corridor. Troppmann evidently belonged to the guillotine – and the procession set off toward it.

X. This procession could be called a flight. Troppmann walked in front of us with quick, resilient, almost bounding steps; he was obviously in a hurry, and we all hurried after him. Some of us, anxious to have a look at his face once more, even ran ahead to the right and left of him. So we rushed across the corridor and ran down the other staircase, Troppmann jumping two steps at a time, hastened across another corridor, leaped over a few steps, and finally found ourselves in the high-ceilinged room with the stool I have mentioned, on which “the toilette of the condemned man” was to be completed.

We entered through one door, and the executioner appeared in the other door, walking solemnly, wearing a white tie and a black “suit”, looking for all the world like a diplomat or a Protestant pastor. He was followed by a short, fat old man in a black coat, his first assistant, the hangman of Beauvais. The old man held a small leather bag in his hand. Troppmann stopped at the stool. Everyone took up a position around him. The executioner and his old assistant stood to the right of him, the warden and Claude to the left. The old man unlocked the bag, took out a few white rawhide straps, some of them long, some short, and kneeling down behind Troppmann with difficulty, began to hobble his legs. Troppmann accidentally stepped on the end of one of these straps, and the old man, trying to pull it out, muttered twice, “Pardon, monsieur,” and at last touched Troppmann on the calf of the leg. Troppmann instantly turned around and, with his customary polite half-bow, raised his foot and freed the strap.

Meanwhile, the priest was softly reading prayers in French out of a small book. Two other assistants came up, quickly removed Troppmann’s jacket, tied his hands behind him, and began to tie the straps around his whole body. The chief executioner gave orders, pointing here and there with a finger. It seemed that there were not enough holes in the straps for the tongues to go through – no doubt the man who made the holes had had a fatter man in mind. The old man first searched in his bag, then fumbled around in all his pockets, and having felt everything carefully, finally pulled out of one of them a small, crooked awl, with which he painfully began to bore holes in the straps; his clumsy fingers, swollen with gout, obeyed him poorly, and besides, the hide was new and thick. He would make a hole, try it out – the tongue would not go through; he had to bore a little more. The priest evidently realized that things were not as they should be, and glancing stealthily once or twice over his shoulder, began to draw out the words of the prayers so as to give the old man time to get things right. Eventually the operation, during which I was covered with cold sweat, I frankly confess, ended, and all the tongues were inserted where required.

But then another one started. Troppmann was asked to sit down on the stool before which he was standing, and the same gouty old man began cutting his hair. He took out a pair of small scissors and, curling his lips, carefully cut off the collar of Troppmann’s shirt first, the shirt he had just put on and from which it would have been so easy to tear off the collar beforehand. But the cloth was course and tightly pleated, and it resisted the none-too-sharp blades. The chief executioner had a look and was dissatisfied: the space left by the severed piece was not big enough. He indicated with his hand how much more he wanted cut off, and the gouty old man set to work again cutting off another big piece of cloth. The top of the back was uncovered – the shoulder blades became visible. Troppmann twitched them slightly; it was cold in the room. Then the old man started on the hair. Putting his puffy left hand on Troppmann’s head, which promptly bent over obediently, he began cutting the hair with his right. Thick strands of wiry, dark-brown hair slid down the shoulders and fell onto the floor; one of them rolled right up to my boot. Troppmann kept his head bent in his continually obedient manner; the priest dragged out the words of the prayers even more slowly. I could not take my eyes off those hands, once stained with innocent blood but now lying so helplessly one on top of the other – and above all, that slender, youthful neck…In my imagination, I could not help seeing a line cut straight across it…There, I thought, a five-hundred-pound axe would pass in a few moments, smashing the vertebrae, cutting through the veins and muscles, and yet the body did not seem to expect anything of the kind: it was so smooth, so white, so healthy…

I could not help asking myself what that ever-so-obediently bent head was thinking about at that moment. Was it holding on stubbornly – as the saying goes, with clenched teeth – to one and the same thought: “I won’t break down”? Were all sorts of memories of the past, probably quite unimportant ones, flashing through it at that moment? Was the memory of the face of one of the members of the Kink family, twisted in the agony of death, passing through it? Or was it – that head – simply trying not to think, merely repeating to itself, “That’s nothing, that doesn’t matter, we shall see, we shall see…”? And would it go on repeating this until death came crashing down upon it – and there would be nowhere to recoil from it?...

The little old man kept on cutting and cutting…The hair crunched as it was caught up by the scissors…At last this operation, too, came to an end. Troppmann stood up quickly, shook his head… Ordinarily, the condemned prisoners who are still able to speak address the warden of the prison at this point with a last request, remind him of any money or debts they may be leaving behind, thank their guards, ask that a last note or a strand of hair be sent to their relatives, convey their regards for the last time – but Troppmann was evidently not an ordinary prisoner: he scorned such “sentimentalities” and did not utter a single word – he remained silent. He waited. A short tunic was thrown over his shoulders. The executioner grasped his elbow…

“Look here, Troppmann (Voyons, Troppmann),” Claude’s voice resounded in the deathlike stillness, “soon, in another minute, everything will be at an end. Do you still persist in claiming that you had accomplices?”

“Yes, sir, I do persist (Oui, monsieur, je persiste),” Troppmann answered in the same pleasant, firm baritone voice, and he bent forward slightly, as though courteously apologizing and even regretting that he could not answer otherwise.

“Eh bien! Allons!” cried Claude, and we all set off. We went out into the large prison courtyard.

XI. It was five to seven, but the sky had barely grown any lighter, and the same dismal mist covered everything, concealing the contours of every object. The roar of the crowd encompassed us in an unbroken, earsplitting, thunderous wave as soon as we stepped across the threshold. Our little group, which had become thinner – for some of us had lagged behind, and I, too, although walking with the others, kept myself a little apart – moved rapidly over the cobbled pavement of the courtyard straight to the gates. Troppmann minced along nimbly, his shackles interfering with his stride. How small he looked to me then – almost like a child! Suddenly the two halves of the gates, like the immense mouth of some animal, slowly opened up before us – and all at once, seemingly accompanied by the enormous roar of the overjoyed crowd that had finally caught sight of what it had been waiting for, the monster of the guillotine stared at us with its two narrow black beams and its suspended axe.

I suddenly became cold, so cold that I almost felt sick; it seemed to me that this cold also rushed into the courtyard toward us through those gates; my legs gave way under me. However, I managed to cast another glance at Troppmann. He unexpectedly recoiled, tossing back his head and bending his knees, as though someone had hit him in the chest. “He’s going to faint,” someone whispered in my ear… But he recovered himself immediately and proceeded forward with a firm step. Those of us who wanted to see how his head would roll off rushed past him into the street…I did not have enough courage for that, and I stopped at the gates with a sinking heart…

I saw the executioner rise suddenly like a black tower on the left side of the guillotine platform; I saw Troppmann, separated from the huddle of people below, scramble up the steps (there were ten of them – as many as ten!); I saw him stop and turn around; I heard him say: “Dites à Monsieur Claude…”; I saw him appear up above as two men pounced on him from the right and the left, like spiders on a fly; I saw him suddenly fall forward, his heels kicking…

But at this point I turned away and began to wait, the ground slowly rising and falling under my feet…And it seemed to me that I was waiting for a terribly long time. I managed to notice that at Troppmann’s appearance the roar of the crowd abruptly seemed to wind itself up – and a breathless hush fell over everything…A sentry, a young red-cheeked fellow, was standing in front of me…I had time to see him looking at me intently with perplexity and horror…I even had time to think that this soldier probably hailed from some godforsaken village, probably came from a decent, law-abiding family, and – and the things he had to see now! At last I heard a light knock of wood on wood – that was the sound made by the top part of the yoke, with its slit for the passage of the knife, as it fell around the murderer’s head and held it immobile…Then something suddenly descended with a hollow growl and stopped with an abrupt thud…just as though a huge animal had retched…I cannot think of any better comparison. I felt dizzy. Everything swam before my eyes…

Someone seized me by the arm. I looked up; it was Claude’s assistant, J---, whom my friend Du Camp, as I learned afterward, had asked to keep an eye on me.

“You are very pale,” he remarked with a smile. “Would you like a drink of water?”

But I thanked him and went back to the prison courtyard, which seemed to me like a place of refuge from the horrors on the other side of the gates.

XII. Our group assembled in the guardhouse by the gates to say goodbye to the warden and wait for the crowds to disperse. I went in there as well, and learned that, while lying on the plank, Troppmann had suddenly thrown his head convulsively to the side, so that it did not fit into the semicircular hole. The executioners were forced to drag it there by the hair, and while they were doing so, Troppmann bit the finger of one of them – the chief one. I also heard that immediately after the execution, as the body, which had been thrown into the van, was rapidly being taken away, two men took advantage of the first moments of unavoidable confusion to force their way through the lines of soldiers, and crawling under the guillotine, they began wetting their handkerchiefs in the blood that had dripped through the chinks of the planks…
But I listened to that entire conversation as though in a dream. I felt very tired – and I was not the only one to feel like that. They all looked tired, although they all obviously felt relieved, as if a load had been removed from their shoulders. But not one of us, absolutely no one looked like a man who realized that he had been present at the performance of an act of social justice. Everyone tried to turn away in spirit and, as it were, shake off the responsibility for this murder.

Du Camp and I said goodbye to the warden and went home. A whole stream of human beings – men, women, and children – rolled pas us in disorderly, untidy waves. Almost all of them were silent; only the laborers occasionally shouted to one another: “Where are you off to? And you?” and the street urchins whistled at the “coquettes” who rode past. What drunken, morose, sleepy faces! What looks of boredom, fatigue, dissatisfaction, disappointment – listless, mindless disappointment! I did not see many drunks, though: they had either already been picked up or had quieted down by themselves. The workaday life was receiving all these people into its bosom once more – and why, for the sake of what sensations, had they left its rut for a few hours? It is awful to contemplate what is hidden there…

About two hundred feet from the prison we hailed a cab, got into it, and rode off.

On the way, Du Camp and I discussed what we had seen, about which he had recently (in the January issue of Revue des Deux Mondes previously quoted by me) said so many weighty, sensible things. We spoke of the unnecessary, senseless barbarism of that entire medieval procedure, thanks to which the criminal’s agony continued for half an hour (from twenty-eight minutes past six to seven o’clock), of the hideousness of all those undressings, dressings, hair-cutting, those journeys along corridors and up and down staircases…By what right was all that done? How could such a shocking routine be allowed? And capital punishment itself – could it possibly be justified? We had seen the impression such a spectacle made on the common people; indeed, there was no trace whatsoever of a so-called instructive spectacle. Barely one-thousandth part of the crowd, no more than fifty or sixty people, could have seen anything in the semi-darkness of early morning at a distance of 150 feet through the lines of soldiers and the rumps of the horses. And all the rest? What benefit, however small, could they have derived from that drunken, sleepless, idle, depraved night? I remembered the young laborer who had been shouting senselessly and whose face I had studied for several minutes. Would he start to work today as a man who hated vice and idleness more than before? And what about me? What did I get out of it? A feeling of involuntary astonishment at the murderer, a moral monster, who could show his contempt for death. Can the lawgiver desire such impressions? What “moral purpose” can one possibly allege after so many refutations, confirmed by experience?

But I am not going to indulge in arguments – they would lead me too far afield. And besides, who is not aware of the fact that the question of capital punishment is one of the most urgent questions that humanity has to solve at this moment? I will be content and excuse my own misplaced curiosity if my account supplies a few arguments to those who are in favor of the abolition of capital punishment or, at least, the abolition of public executions.”

Source: Extract from the Mémoires de Monsieur Claude, Paris, Arléa, 1999, chap. XXXI, p. 311-313 (available in English: Memoirs of Monsieur Claude, Chief of Police under the second empire, trans. Katherine Prescott Wormeley, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1907)

Extract from the Memoirs of Monsieur Claude, Chief of Police under the second empire, edited by Sylvain Goudemare, Paris, Arléa, 1999, chap. XXXI. Troppmann’s last hour, p.311-313. Jean-Baptiste Troppmann (1849-1870) was sentenced to death on December 31^st 1869 by the Assizes court of the Seine for the murder of Mme Kinck and her six children in Pantin (northern suburb of Paris). Troppmann’s crime, trial and execution are generally considered as the first example of large-scale mediatization of a crime by the popular press. At this time, Le Petit Journal, a popular newspaper founded in 1863, reached epic levels of readership. It is even said that one of their journalists took the place of an executioner’s assistant to be as close as possible to the big event! L’illustration, another popular paper, described it as a “triumphant execution”. Monsieur Claude, the chief of police, bears witness to this spectacle by underlining the impressive presence of the “populace” (rabble, riffraff) during a time when the empire was declining and scandal was erupting over the murder of Republican journalist Victor Noir. Yet the spectacle of the execution was not only for and by the public, since the prison director himself played host during this event… The writer Ivan Turgenev found himself alongside M. Claude during the execution, and gives us this poignant account of the scene. The full text:  (The Essential Turgenev, ed. Elizabeth Cheresh Allen, “The execution of Troppmann”, trans. D. Magarshack (1958), Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1994. p791-811).

“I. In January of the current year (1870), while dining in Paris at the house of an old friend of mine, I received from Du Camp, the well-known writer and expert on the statistics of Paris, an utterly unexpected invitation to be present at the execution of Troppmann - and not only at his execution: it was proposed that I should be admitted to the prison itself, together with a small number of other privileged persons. The terrible crime committed by Troppmann still has not been forgotten, but at that time Paris was as interested in him and his impending execution, if not more, than it was in the recent appointment of the pseudo-parliamentarian ministry of Olivier or the murder of Victor Noir, who fell at the hand of the afterward surprisingly acquitted Prince Pierre Bonaparte. All the windows of the photographers’ and stationers’ shops exhibited whole rows of photographs showing a young fellow with a large forehead, dark eyes, and puffy lips, the “famous” Pantin murderer (de l’illustre assassin de Pantin), and for several evenings in a row, thousands of workmen had already been gathering in the environs of Roquette Prison in hopes of seeing the erection of the guillotine, dispersing only after midnight. Taken by surprise at Du Camp’s proposal, I accepted, without giving it much thought. And having promised to arrive at the place fixed for our meeting – the statue of Prince Eugene at the boulevard of the same name, at eleven o’clock in the evening – I did not want to go back on my word. False pride prevented my doing so…And what if they should think that I was a coward? As punishment to myself - and as a lesson to others – I should now like to recount everything I saw. I intend to revive in my memory all the painful impressions of that night. It will not be only the reader’s curiosity that is satisfied: he may derive some benefit from my story. 

II. A small crowd of people was already waiting for Du Camp and me at the prince’s statue. Among them was Monsieur Claude, the police commissioner of Paris (chef de la police de sûreté), to whom Du Camp introduced me. The others were privileged visitors like myself, journalists, reporters, etc. Du Camp had warned me that we would probably have to spend a sleepless night in the office of the prison warden. The execution of condemned criminals takes place during the winter at seven o’clock in the morning; but one had to be at the prison before midnight or one might not be able to push one’s way through the crowd. It is only about half a mile from the statue of Prince Eugene to Roquette Prison, but so far I could see nothing in any way out of the ordinary. There were just a few more people on the boulevard than usual. One could not help noting one thing, though: almost all the people were going – and some, especially women, running – in the same direction; in addition, all the cafés and taverns were ablaze with lights, which is very rare in the remote quarters of Paris, especially so late at night. The night was not foggy, but was dismal, damp without rain, and cold without frost – a typical French January night. Claude said that it was time to go, and off we went. He preserved the imperturbable cheerfulness of a practical man in whom such events did not arouse any feelings, except perhaps the desire to dispose of his sad duty as soon as possible.

Claude was a thickset, broad-shouldered man of about fifty, of medium height, with a round, closely cropped head and small, almost minute, features – only his forehead, chin, and the back of his head were at all broad. Relentless energy was evident in his dry, even voice, his pale-grey eyes, his short, strong fingers, his muscular legs, and all his unhurried but decisive movements. He was said to be an expert at his profession, inspiring mortal terror in all thieves and murderers; political crimes were not part of his responsibilities. His assistant, Monsieur J---, whom Du Camp also admired, looked like a kindly, almost sentimental man, and his manners were much more refined. With the exception of these two gentlemen and perhaps Du Camp, we all felt a little awkward – or did it only seem that way to me? – and a little ashamed too, although we walked along jauntily, as though on a hunting expedition.

The nearer we came to the prison, the more crowded the streets became, even though there were no real crowds as yet. No shouts could be heard, or even any overly loud conversations; it was evident that the “performance” had not yet commenced. Only the street urchins were already weaving around us; their hands thrust in the pockets of their trousers and the peaks of their caps pulled down to their eyes, they sauntered along with that special insolent, rollicking gait that can only be seen in Paris and that can be converted into agile running and jumping like that of a monkey in a twinkling of an eye.

“There he is – there he is – it’s him!” a few voices shouted around us.

“Why,” Du Camp suddenly said to me, “you’ve been mistaken for the executioner!”

“A lovely beginning!” I thought.

The Paris executioner, Monsieur de Paris, whose acquaintance I made that same night, is as tall and gray as I am.

But soon we came to a long, not terribly wide square bounded on two sides by barracklike buildings with grimy facades and crude architecture: that was Roquette Square. On the left was the prison for young criminals (prison des jeunes détenus) and on the right – the building for condemned prisoners (maison de depot pour les condamnés), or Roquette Prison.

III. A squad of soldiers was drawn up four-deep right across the square, and about two hundred feet from it, another squad was also drawn up four-deep. As a rule, no soldiers are present at an execution, but in this case, in view of Troppmann’s “reputation” and the present state of public opinion, excited by Noir’s murder, the government thought it necessary to take special measures and not to leave the preservation of law and order to the police alone. The main gates of Roquette Prison were exactly in the center of the empty space closed in by the soldiers. A few police sergeants walked slowly up and down before the gates; a young, rather fat police officer in an unusually richly embroidered cap (evidently the chief inspector of that quarter of the city) swooped down on our group so peremptorily that it reminded me of the good old days in my beloved country; but upon recognizing his superiors, he became calmer. They let us into a small guardroom beside the gates with immense caution, barely opening the gates, and – after a preliminary examination and interrogation – led us across two inner courtyards, one large and another small, to the warden’s lodgings.

The warden, a tall, stalwart man with a gray moustache and goatee, had the typical face of a French infantry officer: an aquiline nose, immobile, rapacious eyes, and a tiny skull. He received us very politely and benignly; but even without his being aware of it, his every gesture, his every word, at once showed that he was “a reliable fellow” (un gaillard slide), an utterly loyal servant, who would not hesitate to carry out any order given by his master. Indeed, he had proved his zeal in action; on the night of the coup d’état of December second, he and his battalion had occupied the printing works of the Moniteur.

Like a true gentleman, he put the whole of his apartment at our disposal. It was on the second floor of the main building and consisted of four fairly well-furnished rooms; in two of them, a fire was lit in the fireplace. A small Italian greyhound with a dislocated leg and a mournful expression in its eyes, as though it, too, felt like a prisoner, limped from one rug to another, wagging its tail. There were eight of us visitors; I recognized some from their photographs (Sardou, Albert Wolf), but I did not feel like talking to any of them. We all sat down on chairs in the drawing room. (Du Camp had gone out with Claude.)

It goes without saying that Troppmann became the subject of conversation and, as it were, the center of all our thoughts. The prison warden told us that he had been asleep since nine o’clock in the evening and was sleeping like a log; that he seemed to have guessed what had happened to his request for a reprieve; that he had implored him, the warden, to tell him the truth; that he kept stubbornly insisting that he had accomplices, whom he refused to name; that he would probably lose his nerve at the decisive moment, but that he ate with appetite, did not read books, etc., etc. For our part, some of us wondered whether one ought to give credence to the words of a criminal who had proved himself to be an inveterate liar, went over the details of the murder, asked ourselves what phrenologists would make of Troppmann’s skull, raised the question of capital punishment – but all this was so lifeless, so dull, so platitudinous, that even those who spoke did not feel like continuing. To talk about something else was rather embarrassing, even impossible – impossible out of respect for death alone, for the man who was doomed to die. We were all overwhelmed by a feeling of irksome and tedious – yes, tedious – discomfort; no one was really bored, but this dreary feeling was a hundred times worse than boredom! It seemed as though there would be no end to the night! As for me, there was one thing I was sure of: namely, that I had no right to be where I was, that no psychological or philosophical considerations excused me. Claude came back and told us how the notorious Jude had slipped through his fingers and how he was still hoping to catch him, if he was still alive. But suddenly we heard the heavy clatter of wheels, and a few moments later we were informed that the guillotine had arrived. We all rushed out into the street – just as though we were pleased!

IV. Before the prison gates stood a huge, closed van, drawn by three horses harnessed one behind the other; another two-wheeled van, a small, low one, which looked like an oblong box and was drawn by one horse, had stopped a little farther off. (That one, as we learned later, was to transport the body of the executed man to the cemetery immediately after the execution.) A few workmen wearing short jackets were visible around the vans, and a tall man in a round hat and white necktie, with a light overcoat thrown across his shoulders, was giving orders in an undertone…That was the executioner. All the authorities – the prison warden, Claude, the district police inspector, and so on – were surrounding and greeting him. “Ah, Monsieur Indric! Bon soir, Monsieur Indric!” (His real name is Heidenreich: he is an Alsatian.) Our group also walked up to him: for a moment he became the center of our attention. There was a certain strained but respectful familiarity in the way everyone treated him: “We don’t look down upon you, for you are, after all, a person of importance!” Some of us, probably just to show off, even shook hands with him. (He had a pair of beautiful, remarkably white hands.) I recalled a line from Pushkin’s Poltava:

            The executioner…

            Playing with his white hands…

Indric comported himself very simply, gently, and courteously, but not without a touch of patriarchal gravity. It seemed as though he felt we regarded him that night as second in importance only to Troppmann, and, so to speak, as his first minister.

The workmen opened the bigger van and began taking out all the component parts of the guillotine, which they had to put up within fifteen feet of the prison gates. Two lanterns began to move back and forth just above the ground, illuminating the polished cobblestones of the roadway with small, bright circles of light. I looked at my watch – it was only half past twelve! It had grown darker and colder. There were already a large number of people present, and behind the rows of the soldiers bordering the empty space in front of the prison rose an uninterrupted, dim hubbub of human voices. I walked up to the soldiers: they stood motionless, having drawn a little closer together and thereby breaking the original symmetry of their ranks. Their faces expressed nothing but cold, patiently submissive boredom; even the faces I could discern behind the shakos and uniforms of the soldiers and behind the three-cornered hats and tunics of the policemen, the faces of the workmen and artisans, all expressed virtually the same thing, merely adding some sort of indefinable amusement. Up ahead, from behind the mass of the stirring, shoving crowd, one could hear exclamations like “Ohé Troppmann! Ohé Lambert! Fallait pas qu’y aille!” There were shouts and shrill whistles. One could clearly make out a noisy argument going on someplace; a fragment of some cynical song came creeping along like a snake – and there was a sudden burst of loud laughter that was instantly taken up by the crowd, ending with a roar of coarse guffaws. The “real business” had not yet begun; one could not hear the antidynastic shouts everyone expected, or the all-too-familiar menacing reverberations of the Marseillaise.

I went back to a spot near the slowly rising guillotine. A certain curly-haired, dark-complexioned gentleman in a soft, gray hat, probably a lawyer, was standing beside me haranguing two or three other gentlemen in tightly buttoned-up overcoats, waving the forefinger of his right hand forcefully up and down, trying to prove that Troppmann was not a murderer, but a maniac. “Un maniaque! Je vais vous le prouver! Suivez mon raisonnement!” he kept saying. “Son mobile n’était pas l’assassinat, mais un orgueil que je nommerais volontier démesuré! Suivez mon raisonnement!” The gentlemen in the overcoats “followed his reasoning,” but to judge by their expressions, he hardly convinced them; the worker sitting on the platform of the guillotine looked at him with undisguised contempt. I returned to the prison warden’s apartment.

V. A few of our “colleagues” had already gathered there. The courteous warden was regaling them with mulled wine. They started to discuss once more whether Troppmann was still asleep, what he ought to be feeling, whether he could hear the noise of the people despite the distance of his cell from the street, and so on. The warden showed us a whole pile of letters addressed to Troppmann, who, the warden assured us, refused to read them. Most of them seemed to be full of silly jokes, but there were also some that were serious, in which he was admonished to repent and confess everything; one Methodist clergyman sent a whole theological thesis of twenty pages; there were also short notes from ladies, some of whom enclosed flowers – daisies and chrysanthemums. The warden told us that Troppmann had tried to get some poison from the prison pharmacist and wrote a letter asking for it, which the pharmacist, of course, immediately forwarded to the authorities. I could not help feeling that our worthy host was rather at a loss to explain to himself the interest we took in a man like Troppmann who, in his opinion, was a savage, disgusting animal, and all but ascribed it to the casual curiosity of civilian men of the world, the “idle rich”.

After a little more conversation, we just crawled off into different corners. During the whole of that night we wandered around like condemned souls – “comme des âmes en peine,” as the French say – went into various rooms, sat down side by side on chairs in the drawing room, inquired about Troppmann, glanced at the clock, yawned, went downstairs into the yard and street again, came back, sat down again… Some of us told off-color anecdotes, exchanged trivial personal news, touched lightly on politics, the theater, Noir’s murder; others tried to crack jokes, to say something witty, but that evidently did not work at all, provoking some sort of unpleasant laughter, which was instantly cut short, some sort of false approbation. I found a tiny sofa in an anteroom and somehow or other managed to lie down on it. I tried to sleep, but did not succeed, of course – I did not doze off for one moment.

The distant, hollow noise of the crowd was getting louder, deeper, and more and more unbroken. By three o’clock, according to Claude, who kept coming into the room, sitting down on a chair, falling asleep at once, then disappearing again, summoned by one of his subordinates, more than twenty-five thousand people had already gathered there. The noise astonished me with its resemblance to the distant roar of the sea: it was the same sort of unending Wagnerian crescendo, not rising continuously, but with huge intervals between the ebb and flow, the shrill notes of women’s and children’s voices rose in the air like thin spray over this enormous rumbling noise; in it was discernible the brutal power of some elemental force. It would grow quiet and die down for a moment; then the hubbub would restart, grow and swell, and in another moment would seem to be about to strike, as though wishing to tear everything down; and then it would retreat again, grow quiet, and swell once more – there seemed to be no end to it. And what, I could not help asking myself, did this noise signify? Impatience? Joy? Malice? No! It did not serve as an echo of any distinct human feeling…It was simply the rumble, the roar of the elements.

VI. At about three o’clock in the morning, I must have gone out into the street for the tenth time. The guillotine was ready. Its two beams, separated by about two feet, connected by the slanting line of the blade, stood out dimly and strangely, rather than terribly, against the dark sky. For some reason, I imagined that those beams ought to be more distant from each other; their proximity lent the whole machine a sort of sinister shapeliness, the shapeliness of a long, carefully stretched out swan’s neck. A large, dark-red wicker basket, looking like a suitcase, aroused a feeling of disgust in me. I knew that the executioners would throw the warm, still quivering dead body and the cut-off head into that basket…

The mounted police (garde municipale), who had arrived a little earlier, took up their positions in a large semicircle before the facade of the prison; from time to time the horses neighed, champing at their bits and tossing their heads; large drops of white froth appeared on the pavement between their forelegs. The riders dozed somberly beneath their bearskin caps, which they had pulled down over their eyes. The lines of the soldiers cutting across the square and holding back the crowds had retreated farther: now there were not two hundred but three hundred feet of empty space before the prison.

I went up to one of those lines and gazed at the people crammed behind it for a long time; their shouting actually was elemental, that is, senseless. I still remember the face of a workman, a young fellow of about twenty: he stood there grinning, with his eyes trained on the ground, just as though he were thinking of something amusing, then he would suddenly throw back his head, open his mouth wide, and begin to shout in a drawn-out voice, without words, and then his head would sink again and he would start to grin again. What was going on inside that man? Why had he consigned himself to such a painfully sleepless night, to an almost eight-hour-long immobility?

My ears did not catch any snatches of conversation; occasionally, through the unceasing uproar, would come the piercing cry of a hawker selling a leaflet about Troppmann, his life, his execution, and even his “last words”. .. Or an argument would break out again somewhere far away, or there would be a hideous burst of laughter, or some women would start screaming…This time I heard the Marseillaise, but it was sung by just five or six men, with interruptions, too, at that – the Marseillaise becomes significant only when thousands are signing it. “A bas Pierre Bonaparte!” someone shouted at the top of his voice… "Oo-oo-ah-ah!" the crowd responded in an incoherent roar. In one place, the shouts assumed the measured rhythm of a polka: one-two-three-four! one-two-three-four! To the well-known tune des lampions!

A heavy, rank breath of alcoholic fumes came from the crowd. A great deal of wine had been consumed by al those bodies; there were a great many drunken men there. Not for nothing did the taverns glow with reddish lights in the general background of this scene. The night had grown pitch-dark; the sky had become totally overcast, turning black. There were small clumps on the sparse trees, which loomed indistinctly in the darkness, like phantoms: there were street urchins who had climbed the trees and were sitting among the branches, whistling and screeching like birds. One of them had fallen and, it is said, was fatally injured, having broken his spine; but he only aroused loud laughter, and only for a short time.

On my way back to the warden’s apartment, I passed the guillotine and saw the executioner, surrounded by a small crowd of inquisitive people, on its platform. He was performing a “rehearsal” for them; he threw down the hinged plank to which the criminal was fastened and whose tip touched the semicircular slot between the beams as it fell; he released the knife, which came down heavily and smoothly with a rapid, hollow roar, and so forth. I did not stop to watch this “rehearsal,” that is to say, I did not climb onto the platform; the feeling of having committed some unknown transgression, the sense of some secret shame, was growing stronger and stronger inside me…Perhaps this feeling accounts for the fact that the horses harnessed to the vans, calmly chewing the oats in their nosebags, at that moment seemed to me to be the only innocent creatures among us all.

I went back to the solitude of my little sofa once more, and once more began to listen to the roar of the breakers on the seashore…

VII. Contrary to the general assumption, the last hour of waiting passes much more quickly than the first, and even more quickly than the second or third…So it was now. We were surprised by the news that it had struck six, and that only one more hour remained to the moment of execution. We were supposed to go to Troppmann’s cell in exactly half an hour, at half past six. All traces of sleep promptly disappeared from every face. I do not know what the others were feeling, but I felt terribly sick at heart. A new figure appeared: a short, gray-haired man with a thin little face, the priest, flashed by wearing his long, black cassock, along with the ribbon of the Légion d’honneur and a low, wide-brimmed hat. The warden had prepared a sort of breakfast for us, une collation; huge cups of chocolate appeared on the round table in the drawing room…I did not even go near it, although our hospitable host advised me to fortify myself “because the morning air might be harmful.” Eating food at that moment seemed to me…disgusting. Good Lord – a feast at such a time! “I have no right,” I said to myself for the hundredth time since the beginning of that night.

“Is he still asleep?” one of us asked, sipping his chocolate.

(They were all speaking about Troppmann without referring to him by name; there could be no question of any other him.)

“Yes, he’s asleep,” replied the warden.

“In spite of this terrible racket?”

(The noise had grown extraordinarily loud, in fact, turning into a kind of hoarse roar; the menacing chorus no longer rose in a crescendo – it rumbled victoriously, cheerfully.)

“His cell is behind three walls,” the warden observed.

Claude, whom the warden clearly treated as the most important person among us, looked at his watch and said: “Twenty past six.”

We all must have shuddered inwardly, I expect, but we just put on our hats and set off noisily after our guide.

“Where are you dining today?” a reporter asked in a loud voice.

But that struck us all as a little too unnatural.

VIII. We went out into the large prison courtyard; there, in the corner on the right, a sort of roll call took place in front of a half-closed door; then we were shown into a tall, narrow, entirely empty room with a leather stool in the center.

“It is here that la toilette du condamné takes place,” Du Camp whispered to me.

We did not all fit in: there were about ten of us, including the warden, the priest, Claude, and his assistant. During the next two or three minutes we spent in that room (some kind of official documents were being signed there), the thought that we had no right to do what we were doing, that by being present with an air of hypocritical solemnity at the killing of a fellow human being we were performing some odious, iniquitous farce – that thought flashed through my mind for the last time; as soon as we set off, following Claude again along the wide stone corridor dimly lit by two nightlights, I no longer felt anything except that now – now – this minute – this second… We rapidly climbed two staircases, entered another corridor, walked through it, went down a narrow spiral staircase, and found ourselves before an iron door…Here!

The warden unlocked the door cautiously. It opened quietly – and we all slowly and silently filed into a rather spacious room with yellow walls, a high barred window, and a crumpled bed on which no one was lying…The steady glow of a large night-light illuminated all the objects in the room quite clearly.

I was standing a little behind the rest and, as I recall, I involuntarily squinted; however, I immediately saw a young, dark-haired, dark-eyed person diagonally opposite me, gazing at us all with huge, round eyes that moved slowly from left to right. It was Troppmann. He had woken up just before our arrival. He was standing in front of the table on which had just written a farewell (albeit rather trivial) letter to his mother. Claude took off his hat and went up to him.

“Troppmann,” he said in his dry, soft, but peremptory voice, “we have come to inform you that your appeal for a reprieve has been denied and that the hour of retribution has come for you.”

Troppmann turned his eyes toward him, but they were no longer “huge”; he regarded him calmly, almost somnolently, and did not utter a word.

“My child,” the priest exclaimed hollowly, going up to him from the other side, “du courage!”

Troppmann looked at him exactly as he had looked at Claude.

“I knew he wouldn’t be afraid,” Claude declared in a confident tone, addressing us all. “Now, when he has gotten over the first shock (le premier choc), I can count on him.”

(Thus does a schoolmaster wishing to cajole his pupil tell him beforehand that he is  “an intelligent fellow.”)

“Oh, I’m not afraid (Oh, je n’ai pas peur!),” said Troppmann, addressing Claude again. “I’m not afraid!”

His voice, a pleasant, youthful baritone, was perfectly steady.

The priest took a small bottle out of his pocket.

“Won’t you have a drop of wine, my child?”

“Thank you, no,” Troppmann replied politely, with a slight bow.

Claude addressed him again.

“Do you insist that you are not guilty of the crime for which you’ve been condemned?”

“I did not strike the blow! (Je n’ai pas frappe!)”

“But…?” the warden interjected.

“I did not strike the blow!”

(For some time, as everyone knows, contrary to his former depositions, Troppmann had asserted that he did take the Kink family to the place where they had been butchered, but that they were murdered by his accomplices, that even the injury to his hand was the result of his attempt to save one of the small children. However, he had told more lies during his trial than most criminals had done before him.)

“And do you still assert that you had accomplices?”

“Yes.”

“You can’t name them, can you?”

“I can’t and I won’t. I won’t.” Troppmann raised his voice, and his face became flushed. It seemed as though he were getting angry.

“Oh, all right, all right,” Claude responded hurriedly, as though implying that he had put his questions only as a formality and that something else had to be done now…

Troppmann had to undress.
Two guards went up to him and began taking off his prison straightjacket (camisole de force), a kind of blouse made of coarse bluish cloth that had belts and buckles in back and long, sewn-up sleeves, the ends of which had strong pieces of tape attached to the waist and thighs. Troppmann stood sideways, within two feet of me. Nothing could have prevented me from closely scrutinizing his face. It could have been described as handsome except for the unpleasantly full lips, which made his mouth protrude a little too much and turn upward, funnel-like, similar to an animal’s, and for the two rows of bad, sparse teeth fanned behind his lips. He had thick, slightly wavy dark hair, full eyebrows, expressive, bulging eyes, a broad, clear forehead, a regular, slightly aquiline nose, and little curls of dark down on his chin…If you had happened to meet such a man outside the prison and not in such surroundings, he would doubtlessly have made a good impression on you. Hundreds of such faces could be seen among young factory workers, pupils in public institutions, etc. Troppmann was of medium height, and had a youthfully thin, slender build. He looked to me like an overgrown boy, and, indeed, he was not yet twenty. He had a natural, healthy, slightly rosy complexion; he did not turn pale even upon our entrance….

There could be no doubt that he really had slept all night. He did not raise his eyes, and his breathing was regular and deep, like a man walking up a steep hill. He shook his hair once or twice, as though wishing to dismiss a troublesome thought, tossed back his head, threw a quick glance at the ceiling, and heaved a hardly perceptible sigh. With the exception of those almost instantaneous movements, nothing in him disclosed – I won’t say fear, but even agitation or anxiety. We were all much paler and more agitated than he, I am sure. When his hands were released from the sewn-up sleeves of the straitjacket, he held his straitjacket up in front of him, by his chest, with a pleased smile while it was being undone at the back; little children behave like that when they are being undressed. Then he took his shirt off himself, put on another clean one, and carefully buttoned the neckband …It was strange to see the free, sweeping movements of that naked body, to see those bare limbs against the yellowish background of the prison wall…

Next he bent down and put on his boots, knocking the heels and soles loudly against the floor and the wall to make sure his feet got into them properly. He did all this cheerfully, without any sign of constraint – almost joyfully, as though he had just been invited to go for a walk. He was silent – and we were silent. We merely exchanged glances, unintentionally shrugging our shoulders in surprise. We were all struck by the simplicity of his movements, a simplicity which, like any other calm and natural manifestation of life, amounted almost to elegance. One member of our group, who met me by accident later that day, told me that all during our stay in Troppmann’s cell he had kept imagining that it was not 1870 but 1794, that we were not ordinary citizens but Jacobins, and that we were taking to his execution not a common murderer but a marquis legitimist, un ci-devant, un talon rouge, monsieur !

It has been observed that when people sentenced to death have their sentences read to them, they either lapse into complete insensibility and, as it were, die and decompose beforehand, or show off and brazen it out, or else surrender themselves to despair, weeping, trembling, and begging for mercy…Troppmann did not fall into any of these categories – and that was why he puzzled even Claude himself.

Let me say, by the way, that if Troppmann had begun to howl and weep, my nerves would certainly not have withstood it and I would have run away. But at the sight of that composure, that simplicity and seeming modesty, all the feelings in me – the feelings of disgust for a pitiless murderer, a monster who cut the throats of little children while they were crying Maman! Maman!, the feeling of compassion in the end for a man whom death was about to swallow up – disappeared and dissolved in a feeling of astonishment. What was sustaining Troppmann? Was it the fact that, although he did not show off, he did “cut a figure” before spectators, giving us his last performance? Or was it innate fearlessness or vanity aroused by Claude’s words, the pride of the struggle that had to be waged to the end – or something else, some as yet undivined feeling ?...He took that secret to the grave with him. Some people are still convinced that Troppmann was not in his right mind. (I mentioned earlier the lawyer in the white hat, whom, incidentally, I never saw again.) The pointlessness – one might almost say the absurdity – of the annihilation of the entire Kink family serves to confirm that point of view to a certain extent.

IX. But presently he finished with his boots, straightened up, and shook himself – ready! They put the prison jacket on him again. Claude asked us to go out and leave Troppmann alone with the priest. We had to wait in the corridor for less than two minutes before his small figure appeared among us, his head fearlessly held high. His religious feelings were not very strong, and he probably carried out the last rite of confession, conducted by the priest to absolve his sins, merely as a formality. All of our group, with Troppmann in the center, immediately went up the narrow spiral staircase we had descended a quarter of an hour before, and – disappeared in pitch darkness: the night-light on the staircase had gone out. It was an awful moment. We all rushed upstairs: we could hear the rapid, harsh clatter of our feet on the iron steps; we trod on one another’s heels; we bumped against one another’s shoulders; one of us had his hat knocked off. Someone behind me angrily shouted: “Mais sacré-dieu! Light a candle! Let’s have some light!” And there among us, together with us in the pitch darkness, was our victim, our prey, that unfortunate man – and which of those who were pushing and scrambling upstairs was he? Would it not occur to him to take advantage of the darkness and, given all his agility and the determination of despair, to escape – where? Anywhere – to some remote corner of the prison – and just smash his head against a wall there! At least he would have killed himself…

I do not know whether these “apprehensions” occurred to anyone else…But they appeared to be unfounded. Our whole group, with the small figure in the middle, emerged from the inner recess of the staircase into the corridor. Troppmann evidently belonged to the guillotine – and the procession set off toward it.

X. This procession could be called a flight. Troppmann walked in front of us with quick, resilient, almost bounding steps; he was obviously in a hurry, and we all hurried after him. Some of us, anxious to have a look at his face once more, even ran ahead to the right and left of him. So we rushed across the corridor and ran down the other staircase, Troppmann jumping two steps at a time, hastened across another corridor, leaped over a few steps, and finally found ourselves in the high-ceilinged room with the stool I have mentioned, on which “the toilette of the condemned man” was to be completed.

We entered through one door, and the executioner appeared in the other door, walking solemnly, wearing a white tie and a black “suit”, looking for all the world like a diplomat or a Protestant pastor. He was followed by a short, fat old man in a black coat, his first assistant, the hangman of Beauvais. The old man held a small leather bag in his hand. Troppmann stopped at the stool. Everyone took up a position around him. The executioner and his old assistant stood to the right of him, the warden and Claude to the left. The old man unlocked the bag, took out a few white rawhide straps, some of them long, some short, and kneeling down behind Troppmann with difficulty, began to hobble his legs. Troppmann accidentally stepped on the end of one of these straps, and the old man, trying to pull it out, muttered twice, “Pardon, monsieur,” and at last touched Troppmann on the calf of the leg. Troppmann instantly turned around and, with his customary polite half-bow, raised his foot and freed the strap.

Meanwhile, the priest was softly reading prayers in French out of a small book. Two other assistants came up, quickly removed Troppmann’s jacket, tied his hands behind him, and began to tie the straps around his whole body. The chief executioner gave orders, pointing here and there with a finger. It seemed that there were not enough holes in the straps for the tongues to go through – no doubt the man who made the holes had had a fatter man in mind. The old man first searched in his bag, then fumbled around in all his pockets, and having felt everything carefully, finally pulled out of one of them a small, crooked awl, with which he painfully began to bore holes in the straps; his clumsy fingers, swollen with gout, obeyed him poorly, and besides, the hide was new and thick. He would make a hole, try it out – the tongue would not go through; he had to bore a little more. The priest evidently realized that things were not as they should be, and glancing stealthily once or twice over his shoulder, began to draw out the words of the prayers so as to give the old man time to get things right. Eventually the operation, during which I was covered with cold sweat, I frankly confess, ended, and all the tongues were inserted where required.

But then another one started. Troppmann was asked to sit down on the stool before which he was standing, and the same gouty old man began cutting his hair. He took out a pair of small scissors and, curling his lips, carefully cut off the collar of Troppmann’s shirt first, the shirt he had just put on and from which it would have been so easy to tear off the collar beforehand. But the cloth was course and tightly pleated, and it resisted the none-too-sharp blades. The chief executioner had a look and was dissatisfied: the space left by the severed piece was not big enough. He indicated with his hand how much more he wanted cut off, and the gouty old man set to work again cutting off another big piece of cloth. The top of the back was uncovered – the shoulder blades became visible. Troppmann twitched them slightly; it was cold in the room. Then the old man started on the hair. Putting his puffy left hand on Troppmann’s head, which promptly bent over obediently, he began cutting the hair with his right. Thick strands of wiry, dark-brown hair slid down the shoulders and fell onto the floor; one of them rolled right up to my boot. Troppmann kept his head bent in his continually obedient manner; the priest dragged out the words of the prayers even more slowly. I could not take my eyes off those hands, once stained with innocent blood but now lying so helplessly one on top of the other – and above all, that slender, youthful neck…In my imagination, I could not help seeing a line cut straight across it…There, I thought, a five-hundred-pound axe would pass in a few moments, smashing the vertebrae, cutting through the veins and muscles, and yet the body did not seem to expect anything of the kind: it was so smooth, so white, so healthy…

I could not help asking myself what that ever-so-obediently bent head was thinking about at that moment. Was it holding on stubbornly – as the saying goes, with clenched teeth – to one and the same thought: “I won’t break down”? Were all sorts of memories of the past, probably quite unimportant ones, flashing through it at that moment? Was the memory of the face of one of the members of the Kink family, twisted in the agony of death, passing through it? Or was it – that head – simply trying not to think, merely repeating to itself, “That’s nothing, that doesn’t matter, we shall see, we shall see…”? And would it go on repeating this until death came crashing down upon it – and there would be nowhere to recoil from it?...

The little old man kept on cutting and cutting…The hair crunched as it was caught up by the scissors…At last this operation, too, came to an end. Troppmann stood up quickly, shook his head… Ordinarily, the condemned prisoners who are still able to speak address the warden of the prison at this point with a last request, remind him of any money or debts they may be leaving behind, thank their guards, ask that a last note or a strand of hair be sent to their relatives, convey their regards for the last time – but Troppmann was evidently not an ordinary prisoner: he scorned such “sentimentalities” and did not utter a single word – he remained silent. He waited. A short tunic was thrown over his shoulders. The executioner grasped his elbow…

“Look here, Troppmann (Voyons, Troppmann),” Claude’s voice resounded in the deathlike stillness, “soon, in another minute, everything will be at an end. Do you still persist in claiming that you had accomplices?”

“Yes, sir, I do persist (Oui, monsieur, je persiste),” Troppmann answered in the same pleasant, firm baritone voice, and he bent forward slightly, as though courteously apologizing and even regretting that he could not answer otherwise.

“Eh bien! Allons!” cried Claude, and we all set off. We went out into the large prison courtyard.

XI. It was five to seven, but the sky had barely grown any lighter, and the same dismal mist covered everything, concealing the contours of every object. The roar of the crowd encompassed us in an unbroken, earsplitting, thunderous wave as soon as we stepped across the threshold. Our little group, which had become thinner – for some of us had lagged behind, and I, too, although walking with the others, kept myself a little apart – moved rapidly over the cobbled pavement of the courtyard straight to the gates. Troppmann minced along nimbly, his shackles interfering with his stride. How small he looked to me then – almost like a child! Suddenly the two halves of the gates, like the immense mouth of some animal, slowly opened up before us – and all at once, seemingly accompanied by the enormous roar of the overjoyed crowd that had finally caught sight of what it had been waiting for, the monster of the guillotine stared at us with its two narrow black beams and its suspended axe.

I suddenly became cold, so cold that I almost felt sick; it seemed to me that this cold also rushed into the courtyard toward us through those gates; my legs gave way under me. However, I managed to cast another glance at Troppmann. He unexpectedly recoiled, tossing back his head and bending his knees, as though someone had hit him in the chest. “He’s going to faint,” someone whispered in my ear… But he recovered himself immediately and proceeded forward with a firm step. Those of us who wanted to see how his head would roll off rushed past him into the street…I did not have enough courage for that, and I stopped at the gates with a sinking heart…

I saw the executioner rise suddenly like a black tower on the left side of the guillotine platform; I saw Troppmann, separated from the huddle of people below, scramble up the steps (there were ten of them – as many as ten!); I saw him stop and turn around; I heard him say: “Dites à Monsieur Claude…”; I saw him appear up above as two men pounced on him from the right and the left, like spiders on a fly; I saw him suddenly fall forward, his heels kicking…

But at this point I turned away and began to wait, the ground slowly rising and falling under my feet…And it seemed to me that I was waiting for a terribly long time. I managed to notice that at Troppmann’s appearance the roar of the crowd abruptly seemed to wind itself up – and a breathless hush fell over everything…A sentry, a young red-cheeked fellow, was standing in front of me…I had time to see him looking at me intently with perplexity and horror…I even had time to think that this soldier probably hailed from some godforsaken village, probably came from a decent, law-abiding family, and – and the things he had to see now! At last I heard a light knock of wood on wood – that was the sound made by the top part of the yoke, with its slit for the passage of the knife, as it fell around the murderer’s head and held it immobile…Then something suddenly descended with a hollow growl and stopped with an abrupt thud…just as though a huge animal had retched…I cannot think of any better comparison. I felt dizzy. Everything swam before my eyes…

Someone seized me by the arm. I looked up; it was Claude’s assistant, J---, whom my friend Du Camp, as I learned afterward, had asked to keep an eye on me.

“You are very pale,” he remarked with a smile. “Would you like a drink of water?”

But I thanked him and went back to the prison courtyard, which seemed to me like a place of refuge from the horrors on the other side of the gates.

XII. Our group assembled in the guardhouse by the gates to say goodbye to the warden and wait for the crowds to disperse. I went in there as well, and learned that, while lying on the plank, Troppmann had suddenly thrown his head convulsively to the side, so that it did not fit into the semicircular hole. The executioners were forced to drag it there by the hair, and while they were doing so, Troppmann bit the finger of one of them – the chief one. I also heard that immediately after the execution, as the body, which had been thrown into the van, was rapidly being taken away, two men took advantage of the first moments of unavoidable confusion to force their way through the lines of soldiers, and crawling under the guillotine, they began wetting their handkerchiefs in the blood that had dripped through the chinks of the planks…
But I listened to that entire conversation as though in a dream. I felt very tired – and I was not the only one to feel like that. They all looked tired, although they all obviously felt relieved, as if a load had been removed from their shoulders. But not one of us, absolutely no one looked like a man who realized that he had been present at the performance of an act of social justice. Everyone tried to turn away in spirit and, as it were, shake off the responsibility for this murder.

Du Camp and I said goodbye to the warden and went home. A whole stream of human beings – men, women, and children – rolled pas us in disorderly, untidy waves. Almost all of them were silent; only the laborers occasionally shouted to one another: “Where are you off to? And you?” and the street urchins whistled at the “coquettes” who rode past. What drunken, morose, sleepy faces! What looks of boredom, fatigue, dissatisfaction, disappointment – listless, mindless disappointment! I did not see many drunks, though: they had either already been picked up or had quieted down by themselves. The workaday life was receiving all these people into its bosom once more – and why, for the sake of what sensations, had they left its rut for a few hours? It is awful to contemplate what is hidden there…

About two hundred feet from the prison we hailed a cab, got into it, and rode off.

On the way, Du Camp and I discussed what we had seen, about which he had recently (in the January issue of Revue des Deux Mondes previously quoted by me) said so many weighty, sensible things. We spoke of the unnecessary, senseless barbarism of that entire medieval procedure, thanks to which the criminal’s agony continued for half an hour (from twenty-eight minutes past six to seven o’clock), of the hideousness of all those undressings, dressings, hair-cutting, those journeys along corridors and up and down staircases…By what right was all that done? How could such a shocking routine be allowed? And capital punishment itself – could it possibly be justified? We had seen the impression such a spectacle made on the common people; indeed, there was no trace whatsoever of a so-called instructive spectacle. Barely one-thousandth part of the crowd, no more than fifty or sixty people, could have seen anything in the semi-darkness of early morning at a distance of 150 feet through the lines of soldiers and the rumps of the horses. And all the rest? What benefit, however small, could they have derived from that drunken, sleepless, idle, depraved night? I remembered the young laborer who had been shouting senselessly and whose face I had studied for several minutes. Would he start to work today as a man who hated vice and idleness more than before? And what about me? What did I get out of it? A feeling of involuntary astonishment at the murderer, a moral monster, who could show his contempt for death. Can the lawgiver desire such impressions? What “moral purpose” can one possibly allege after so many refutations, confirmed by experience?

But I am not going to indulge in arguments – they would lead me too far afield. And besides, who is not aware of the fact that the question of capital punishment is one of the most urgent questions that humanity has to solve at this moment? I will be content and excuse my own misplaced curiosity if my account supplies a few arguments to those who are in favor of the abolition of capital punishment or, at least, the abolition of public executions.”

Troppmann’s execution (January 19th 1870) (continued)

Source : Extract from the Mémoires de Monsieur Claude, Paris, Arléa, 1999, chap. XXXI, p. 311-313.

The execution of Barré and Lebiez (1878): “the avidity of the public”

Source : Archives of the Parisian Police Prefecture, BA/887.

Report from the Parisian chief of Police following the execution of Barré and Lebiez, September 10^th 1878 (Archives of the Parisian Police Prefecture, BA/887) Aimé Barré and Paul Lebiez were sentenced to death by the Assizes court of the Seine on July 31^st, 1878. The former had killed a woman on rue Poliveau in Paris in order to steal from her, and the latter had helped him cut up the body and send it in a suitcase to Le Mans. They were both executed on September 7^th. Several days afterwards, the Parisian chief of Police wrote up this report on the rapidly increasing crowds that would attend executions, on the avidity and the unhealthy desire which pushed people to get as close as possible to the guillotine, and on the ways to remedy what he considered a scandal. Drawing upon his own experience, he started by noting the increase in the size of the crowd : between 25 and 30 thousand people in the beginning of September 1878, a throng that he had never seen before. People came about a week in advance and they didn’t leave the place de la Roquette until after midnight, once they were sure that preparations for the execution wouldn’t start the same day. The report includes an interesting analysis of the make-up of the public: the chief was astonished by the privileged members of this “vulgar” and “risky” mass of people who were restrained by a barrier of soldiers. These privileged few argued over how to place themselves in the place with the best view. Including journalists, the “tout-Paris” (French term for the fashionable elite of Paris, see Wikipedia article titled “Tout-Paris” for an English definition), the idle, the partiers, in sum “all levels of the social ladder” were on the watch. The chief of Police couldn’t help doubting the “moralizing” effect of the guillotine and suggested that private executions should take place inside the prison walls.

The execution of Barré and Lebiz (1878): “the avidity of the public” (continued)

Source : Archives of the Parisian Police Prefecture, BA/887.

The execution of Barré and Lebiz (1878): “the avidity of the public” (continued)

Source : Archives of the Parisian Police Prefecture, BA/887.

The execution of Barré and Lebiz (1878): “the avidity of the public” (end)

Source : Archives of the Parisian Police Prefecture, BA/887.

A proposal to ban all publicity (1909)

Source : Archives of the Parisian Police Prefecture, DB/141.

A bill to ban all publicity of capital punishment, January 14^th 1909 (Archives of the Parisian Police Prefecture, DB/141) Numerous laws were proposed to ban the publicity of executions. There were notably many written by parliamentary members who supported the death penalty and who were aware that such a punishment did not constitute a true deterrent to future crime. By recognizing this, they undermined one of their principal arguments for the death penalty, and abolitionists responded by insisting on the guillotine, a tool so doubtfully deterrent that it was proposed to hide it, as though the state itself was ashamed. Despite these discourses, none of these propositions were adopted before 1939. The proposition cited is rather original because it accuses the press, not the guillotine itself, of creating a spectacle around public execution by recounting the last days of the condemned and offering their “cut-off heads” to readers even in the most far-off countryside. For the authors of this proposition, hiding the guillotine inside the prison courtyard was not enough; all representations of the scene of execution and of the condemned person also needed to be banned. It was not until 1951 that this wish was partially fulfilled by the law of February 11^th 1951 which forbade the publication of any information concerning the condemned person “as long as the death sentence has not yet been officially posted or that the condemned person has not been notified of his pardon whether at the time of his sentence or otherwise.”

Lacenaire’s execution and its (mis)representation in the press

Source : Extract from the Mémoires de Canler, tome I, 4th ed., Paris, F. Roy, 1882, p. 369-373.

Extract from the Memoirs of Canler, chief of police, tome I, 4^th ed., Paris, F. Roy, 1882, p. 369-373. Lacenaire’s crimes and trial profoundly troubled the upper classes: he was in a permanent state of revolt, practically declaring war on society up til the moment of his execution, and on top of that, one of his last poems was a romantic ode to the guillotine. Lacenaire appeared to be an absolute monster whose insolent attitude weakened the very foundation of the social order. Thus, the authorities had their reasons to find a weak spot in his personality to prove – via the press - to the public that in the end, Lacenaire was a man like the others with his own weaknesses and cowardice. The scene of execution was at hand: it was hoped that he’d show weakness, proving that he was a mere mortal, frightened faced with death. The report given by La Gazette des Tribunaux aims to prove this. For the chief of police who was present at the execution, however, the truth was a completely different story.

Lacenaire’s execution and its (mis)representation in the press (continued)

Source : Extract from the Mémoires de Canler, tome I, 4th ed., Paris, F. Roy, 1882, p. 369-373.

An execution report by the small-town press (Chartres, 1874)

Source : Extract from the Journal de Chartres, October 1st 1874.

Extract from the Journal de Chartres, October 1^st 1874 Louis Sylvain Poirier (1843-1874) was sentenced to death by the Assizes court of the Eure-et-Loir department on August 27^th 1874 for five murders outside the capital. The narratives recounting such events were always similar, touching on the same key moments: the arrival of the guillotine, the announcement to the condemned man that his request for pardon had been rejected, a brief description of the execution (which primarily spoke of the professional duties of the executioner without mentioning the blood spilled). The condemned man was presented as a model of courage, or at least resigned to his sentence, which legitimized the punishment doled out to him. For more information: M’Sili (Marine), “Une mise en scène de la violence légitime : Les executions capitals dans la presse (1870 – 1939)” in Bertrand (Régis), Carol (Anne) (dir.). L’exécution capital, une mort donné en spectacle XVIe-XXe siècle, Aix-en-Provence, Publications de l’Université de Provence, 2003, p.167-178.

An incident during an execution at Privas (1850)

Source : Document from the collection of the History Center of the National Archives, Paris, BB/30/536.

Public Prosecutor’s report from the Appeals court of Nîmes, March 21^st 1850 (Document from the collection of the History Center of the National Archives, Paris, BB/30/536) During an execution in Tournon in 1850, the mechanism that guides that falling blade became jammed and the procedure had to be suspended for ten minutes while the condemned man was taken out of the guillotine and the machine was fixed. The prosecutor’s report shows how much the authorities hated these types of events: other than the fact that the “agony of the poor patient was prolonged”, they feared that the public, struck with a “horrible anxiety”, would act out against the executioners. This fear was not in vain because such incidents actually did happen during the first half of the 19^th century. The Gazette des tribunaux dramatically described the scandal that a, to say the least, “laborious” execution in Albi caused on September 20^th 1831. Gazette des tribunaux, Monday the 19^th and Tuesday the 20^th of September, 1831. “EXECUTION OF HEBRARD IN ALBI (Special correspondent). The unthinkable suffering of the condemned. – Horrible details. Sentenced to the death penalty on April 16^th (see the May 8^th issue of the Gazette des Tribunaux), Pierre Hébrard had glimmers of hope; he counted on the request he had made to change his sentence. Five months had passed, and he thought that they wouldn’t have let him live so long if he were to be executed. It was in such a context that on Monday, September 12^th, at ten o’clock in the morning, he learned that he would be executed at four o’clock that evening. His resignation was remarkable; he called in a priest, confessed his crime and received permission to inform the public of this act. At four o’clock on the dot, he was taken from his cell and put on that fatal cart; but as soon as he was there, he was informed that the execution would be delayed for two hours: the poor man thought, perhaps, that a reprieve had arrived, but that was not the case. This was the first time in almost five years that a death sentence had been served in this department, and the guillotine was not in good order. An executioner’s assistant is accused of having meddled with it in order to play a trick on his superior. Soon after, the public prosecutor ordered a carpenter to repair it. The worker obeyed, and it seemed like after this repair, the executioner could have indeed carried out the beheading of Hébrard. This poor man arrived at six o’clock, a huge crowd surrounded the guillotine; the police, with swords in hand, had created a large empty space; the condemned man walked up the steps with a confident gait; he was tied to the board which we call a “bascule”; the executioner and his two assistants were on the platform of the guillotine; the condemned man’s head was placed in the “lunette”; the blade fell, but wobbled on its way; the condemned man was not hit. The crowd shivered, the blade was lifted once again; but when it fell for the second time, it still did not hit the condemned man; at this point, he started to emit horrible screams; a hailstorm of stones was thrown at the executioners; they tried a third time to carry out their act of justice, but in vain, because the blade only made a light wound, and the screams of the patient were renewed with even more force than before, bringing fear into the hearts of everyone. The executioner and his two assistants were concerned as well, and, under this hailstorm of heavy stones, they had to climb off of the guillotine and achieve salvation via escape; Hébrard stayed tied to the guillotine with his neck in the “lunette” this entire time. What a horrible position! He was barely even hurt. This lasted about three minutes; the head executioner climbed back up onto the guillotine and tried once again to behead him; he lifted the blade two more times, but it always wobbled as it fell and did not hit the condemned man. It should be noted that the last time, so the fifth time, that the blade was lifted, it even took half of the lunette board with it. The crowd continued throwing stones toward the guillotine, the executioner got off and escaped, and, since the lunette board was lifted, Hébrard’s head was freed and he sat up as though coming out of a grave; several men in the crowd shouted bravo because they were so stupefied to see a man survive the guillotine five times and stand up in the light of day, and it’s at this point that Hébrard asked for help. A worker approached the guillotine, but he didn’t dare climb up. Two minutes later, the youngest executioner’s assistant, braving the stones and the screams from the public, climbed up alone, and spoke briefly with Hébrard. It seems like the latter told him: untie me because he was still attached to the bascule. The assistant told him to turn his head, and the moment he got him standing, he hit the poor man with several blows of a shoemaker’s dagger. Hébrard’s head was half cut off, and leaned against his left shoulder, and the assistant was forced to escape and find refuge with the police. It was ten after six. Hébrard, who could still breathe, stayed almost two hours in this position, exposed to the gaze of the public. Several people confirmed that for a half hour he made several small movements; his mouth opened from time to time, for example. Since the corpse could not be taken away without a strong escort, the public surrounded the executioner’s apartment and broke the windows with rocks. Truly we must admit that the executioner has nothing to be reproached for; several experts selected by the public prosecutors published a report stating that the guillotine had been purposefully meddled with, and the largest suspicion fell upon one of the executioner’s assistants who had been sent off earlier. Here is a quote from the report: “I, the undersigned, Jean-Pierre Sulvi-Frezouls, a building entrepreneur and master carpenter residing in Albi, declare to have presented myself, under orders of the public procurer, to the executioner of justice in order to verify the instrument of death. I recognize that the strips of the blade had been meddled with, which prevented it from properly falling and correctly touching (the lunette). I think that we can only attribute this fact to an individual who knows something about this machine, and who committed this act out of pure malice.” The head executioner tore out his hair in despair when he saw that the machine missed its mark, even the first time that the blade fell. We can now ask if the executioner’s assistant had the right to change the death sentence ordered (from death by guillotine to death by manual beheading). The head of the condemned man must be cut off, according to article 12 of the Penal Code. A law from ‘91 defines the method of execution. In this law, the horrible ordeal of M. Lally-Tolendal is mentioned. All of Paris, all of France, was outraged upon hearing that this famous victim had received multiple blows from the guillotine without being beheaded. This event significantly contributed to the invention of the guillotine, inspired by a Dutch machine. Hébrard was not killed by the guillotine; he was stabbed, standing, with a shoe-maker's tool. Let us please, in the interest of humanity, discuss this issue. What would have happened if there had been two criminals to execute? Would a man, no matter which man, have the right to take them up to the gallows and to stab them, one after the other? We can’t even describe the horror of such a spectacle; the tumult could be heard a whole league from the town. Never, no never before had something so harrowing troubled a city. That supporters of the death penalty come learn a lesson from the scene of September 12^th! A horrible murderer opened everyone’s hearts to pity and if Roussille, who was the victim of the murder, had not been so beloved in the country, the public would have snatched the murderer from the blade of the law. This is the exact story of what happened. Our correspondent apologizes for the possible disorganization of his writing; his soul is still in a state of disgust from such horrible atrocities” (trans. P. Bass).

An incident during an execution at Privas (1850) (continued)

Source : Document from the collection of the History Center of the National Archives, Paris, BB/30/536.