The matter being referred to Louis, then Secretary of the Academy of Surgeons, he made his report, March 7, 1792. The new law required, that the criminal should be decapitated--_aura la tête tranchée_; and that the punishment should be inflicted _without torture_. Louis shows how difficult the execution of such a law must be--"We should recollect," says he, "the occurrences at M. de Lally's execution. He was upon his knees, with his eyes covered--the executioner struck him, on the back of his neck--the blow was insufficient. He fell upon his face, and three or four cuts of the sabre severed the head. Such _hacherie_ excited a feeling of horror." To such a polite and gentle nation, this must have been highly offensive. April 25, 1798. Roederer, Procureur Genéral, wrote a letter to Lafayette, telling him, that a public trial of the new instrument would take place, that day, in the _Place de Grève_, and would, doubtless, draw a great crowd, and begging him not to withdraw the gens d'armes, till the apparatus had been removed. In the Courrier Extraordinaire, of April 27, 1792, is the following notice--"They made yesterday (meaning the 25th) the first trial of the _little Louison_, and cut off a head, one Pelletier. I never in my life could bear to see a man hanged; but I own I feel a greater aversion to this species of execution. The preparations make me shudder, and increase the moral suffering. The people seemed to wish, that M. Sanson had his old gallows." After the _Louison_, or guillotine, had been in operation rather more than a year, the following interesting letter was sent, by the Procureur Genéral, Roederer, to citizen Guideu. "13 May, 1793. I enclose, citizen, the copy of a letter from citizen Chaumette, solicitor to the commune of Paris, by which you will perceive, that complaints are made, that, after these public executions, the blood of the criminals remains in pools, upon the _Place de Grève_, that dogs came to drink it, and that crowds of men feed their eyes with this spectacle, which naturally instigates their hearts to ferocity and blood. I request you therefore to take the earliest and most convenient opportunity, to remove from the eyes of men a sight so afflicting to humanity."