They say that it is nothing,--that one does not suffer; that it is an
easy death. Ah! then, what do they call this agony of six weeks,--this
summing-up in one day? What, then, is the anguish of this irreparable
day, which is passing so slowly and yet so fast? What is this ladder of
tortures which terminates in the scaffold? Are they not the same
convulsions whether life is taken away drop by drop, or intellect
extinguished thought by thought?