On drawing nearer, this thing assumed a shape, and stood out behind the trees with the lividness of an apparition. The mass grew whiter, and the gradually dawning day threw a ghastly gleam over this mass, which was at once sepulchral and alive,--the heads of the shadows became the faces of corpses, and this is what it was. Seven vehicles were moving in file along the road, and the first six had a singular shape; they resembled brewers' drays, and consisted of long ladders laid upon two wheels, and forming a shaft at the front end. Each dray, or, to speak more correctly, each ladder, was drawn by a team of four horses, and strange clusters of men were dragged along upon these ladders. In the faint light these men could not be seen, so much as divined. Twenty-four on each ladder, twelve on either side, leaning against each other, had their faces turned to the passers-by, and their legs hanging down; and they had behind their back something which rang and was a chain, and something that glistened, which was a collar. Each man had his collar, but the chain was for all; so that these twenty-four men, if obliged to get down from the dray and walk, were seized by a species of inexorable unity, and were obliged to wind on the ground with the chain as backbone, very nearly like centipedes. At the front and back of each cart stood two men armed with guns, who stood with their feet on the end of the chain. The seventh vehicle, a vast fourgon with rack sides but no hood, had four wheels and six horses, and carried a resounding mass of coppers, boilers, chafing-dishes, and chains, among which were mingled a few bound men lying their full length, who seemed to be ill. This fourgon, which was quite open, was lined with broken-down hurdles, which seemed to have been used for old punishments. These vehicles held the crown of the causeway; and on either side marched a double file of infamous-looking guards, wearing three-cornered hats, like the soldiers of the Directory, and dirty, torn, stained uniforms, half gray and blue, a coat of the Invalides and the trousers of the undertaker's men, red epaulettes and yellow belts, and were armed with short sabres, muskets, and sticks. These sbirri seemed compounded of the abjectness of the beggar and the authority of the hangman; and the one who appeared their leader held a postilion's whip in his hands. All these details grew more and more distinct in the advancing daylight; and at the head and rear of the train marched mounted gendarmes with drawn sabres. The train was so long that at the moment when the first vehicle reached the barrière the last had scarce turned out of the boulevard. A crowd, which came no one knew whence and formed in a second, as is so common in Paris, lined both sides of the road, and looked. In the side-lanes could be heard the shouts of people calling to each other, and the wooden shoes of the kitchen-gardeners running up to have a peep.