I have just witnessed a horrible scene. Alas! what harrowing spectacles
meet our eyes on every side, and will still before all this comes to an
end. I accompanied a poor old woman to a cemetery in the east of Paris.
Her son, who had engaged himself in a battalion of Federal guards, had
not been home for five days. He was most likely dead, the neighbours
said, and one bade her “go and look at the Cimetière de l’Est, they
have brought in a load of bodies there.” Imagine a deep trench and
about thirty coffins placed side by side. Numbers of people came there
to claim their own among the dead. To avoid crowding, the National
Guards made the people walk in order, two or three abreast, and thus
they were marshalled among the tombs and crosses. The poor woman and I
followed the others. From time to time I heard a burst of sobs; some
one amongst the dead had been recognised. On we go slowly, step by
step, as if we were at the doors of a theatre. At last we arrive before
the first coffin. The poor mother I have come with is very weak and
very sad; it is I who lift up the thin lid of the coffin. A grey-haired
corpse is lying within it, from the shoulders downwards nothing but a
heap of torn flesh, and clothes, and congealed blood. We continue on.
The second coffin also contains the body of an old man; no wounds are
to be seen; he was probably killed by a ball. Still we advance. I
observe that the old men are in far greater number than the young. The
wounds are often fearful. Sometimes the face is entirely mutilated.
When I had closed the lid of the last coffin the poor mother uttered a
cry of relief; her son was not there! For myself, I was stupefied with
horror, and only recovered my senses on being pushed on by the men
behind me, who wanted to see in their turn. “Well! when will he have
done?” said one. “I suppose he thinks that it is all for him.”
[Illustration: Burning the Guillotine. April]