"Bah! What good is sentiment when you lack a head? No, no. These grandiloquent harangues of mercy and advice disgust me. They are nothing but self-advertisement. If I were a judge, I'd say: "'Collenot, my friend, the Nation has proved you guilty; I pronounce upon you sentence of death; for further details consult Monsieur de Paris. Bon voyage!'" "And the guillotine, Citoyen Goursac: do you find it insincere to despatch an enemy with the least pain?" "Ah, the guillotine! There is a tremendous advance in human thought!" Goursac exclaimed, without deigning to open an argument. "There is something to be proud of. I foresee great innovations from this simple invention. To have learned to suppress human life painlessly is a true sentimental advance. We shall go further." Barabant, seeing that he was started on his theories, said good-humoredly: "Well, what next?" "The day will come when society will regard it as a crime to allow children to grow up who are hopelessly destined to suffering--such as weaklings, monsters, hunchbacks, and the other deformed. The State will suppress them." His companion groaned in horror. "More than that," Goursac contended, "the day will come when the aged, the infirm, the decrepit, the mortally stricken, will be painlessly released from their suffering. Yes, death, when inevitable, will be made instantaneous, and society will approve." "And how soon do you expect this magnificent idea to fructify?" Barabant asked scornfully. "In about two thousand years," Goursac answered, with a hitch of his head. "That is the time necessary for an idea to conquer society." "My dear friend, you are either joking or mad." "The condition of prophecy is to be scorned," the theorist said dryly. "You remember Cassandra." They entered the Place du Carrousel, where the guillotine, whether by conscious or unconscious irony, was established under the frowning shadows of the abode of kings. The dim square was hidden by a loose, shifting network of variegated colors dominated by the bright flecks of countless liberty-caps, which, in measure, as new groups arrived, contracted into mists of red. Above this bobbing field of heads two thin shafts started upward, nearly lost in the descending dusk. Goursac, extending his hand in the direction of these, said: "There is the guillotine." "It does not seem very terrible," answered Barabant. "Let us stay here; it is, perhaps, a false report. In ten minutes it will be too dark." Others with the same idea lingered on the outskirts of the crowd or turned away. The faces of the throng could no longer be distinguished, when suddenly afar there sprang up a circle of torches, and the scaffold emerged from the night.