A large fire was burning in the midst of the gloomy square, round which a party of the National Guard were standing, with their muskets piled, and wrapped in their cloaks, against the inclemency of the night. Further off, and in the centre, feebly seen by the low blaze, was a wooden structure, on whose corners torches were flaring in the wind. "_Voilà, la guillotine_!" exclaimed my captor with the sort of ecstasy which might issue from the lips of a worshipper. As I raised my eyes, an accidental flash of the fire showed the whole outline of the horrid machine. I saw the glitter of the very axe that was to drop upon my head. My first sensation was that of deadly faintless. Ghastly as was the purpose of that axe, my imagination saw even new ghastliness in the shape of its huge awkward scythe-like steel; it seemed made for massacre. The faintness went off in the next moment, and I was another man. In the whole course of a life of excitement, I have never experienced so total a change. All my apathy was gone. The horrors of public execution stood in a visible shape before me at once. I might have fallen in the field with fortitude; I might have submitted to the deathbed, as the course of nature; I might have even died with exultation in some great public cause. But to perish by the frightful thing which shot up its spectral height before me; to be dragged as a spectacle to scoffing and scorning crowds--dragged, perhaps, in the feebleness and squalid helplessness of a confinement which might have exhibited me to the world in imbecility or cowardice; to be grasped by the ruffian executioner, and flung, stigmatized as a felon, into the common grave of felons--the thought darted through my mind like a jet of fire; but it gave me the strength of fire. I determined to die by the bayonets of the guard, or by any other death than this. My captor perceived my agitation, and my eye glanced on his withered and malignant visage, as with a smile he was cocking his pistol. I sprang on him like a tiger. In our struggle the pistol went off, and a gush of blood from his cheek showed that it had inflicted a severe wound. I was now his master, and, grasping him by the throat with one hand, with the other I threw open the door and leaped upon the pavement. For the moment, I looked round bewildered; but the report of the pistol had caught the ears of the guard, whom I saw hurrying to unpile their muskets. But this was a work of confusion, and, before they could snatch up their arms, I had made my choice of the darkest and narrowest of the wretched lanes which issue into the square. A shot or two fired after me sent me at my full speed, and I darted forward, leaving them as they might, to follow.