“You saw how slight that instrument was?  It was one of the first which Guillotin made, and which he showed to private friends in a hangar in the Rue Picpus, where he lived.  The invention created some little conversation amongst scientific men at the time, though I remember a machine in Edinburgh of a very similar construction, two hundred—­well, many, many years ago—­and at a breakfast which Guillotin gave he showed us the instrument, and much talk arose amongst us as to whether people suffered under it.

“And now I must tell you what befell the traitor who had caused all this suffering.  Did he know that the poor child’s death was a sentence?  He felt a cowardly satisfaction that with her was gone the secret of his treason.  Then he began to doubt.  I had means to penetrate all his thoughts, as well as to know his acts.  Then he became a slave to a horrible fear.  He fled in abject terror to a convent.  They still existed in Paris; and behind the walls of Jacobins the wretch thought himself secure.  Poor fool!  I had but to set one of my somnambulists to sleep.  Her spirit went forth and spied the shuddering wretch in his cell.  She described the street, the gate, the convent, the very dress which he wore, and which you saw to-day.

“And now this is what happened.  In his chamber in the Rue St. Honore, at Paris, sat a man alone—­a man who has been maligned, a man who has been called a knave and charlatan, a man who has been persecuted even to the death, it is said, in Roman Inquisitions, forsooth, and elsewhere.  Ha! ha!  A man who has a mighty will.

“And looking towards the Jacobins Convent (of which, from his chamber, he could see the spires and trees), this man willed. And it was not yet dawn.  And he willed; and one who was lying in his cell in the convent of Jacobins, awake and shuddering with terror for a crime which he had committed, fell asleep.

“But though he was asleep his eyes were open.

“And after tossing and writhing, and clinging to the pallet, and saying, ‘No, I will not go,’ he rose up and donned his clothes—­a gray coat, a vest of white pique, black satin small-clothes, ribbed silk stockings, and a white stock with a steel buckle; and he arranged his hair, and he tied his queue, all the while being in that strange somnolence which walks, which moves, which flies sometimes, which sees, which is indifferent to pain, which obeys.  And he put on his hat, and he went forth from his cell; and though the dawn was not yet, he trod the corridors as seeing them.  And he passed into the cloister, and then into the garden where lie the ancient dead.  And he came to the wicket, which Brother Jerome was opening just at the dawning.  And the crowd was already waiting with their cans and bowls to receive the alms of the good brethren.

“And he passed through the crowd and went on his way, and the few people then abroad who marked him, said, ’Tiens! how very odd he looks!  He looks like a man walking in his sleep!’ This was said by various persons:—­