There was a sudden stir; and, suddenly, seven or eight young men, sword in hand, rushed from the Rue Beauregard, dashed forward through the line of armed men, and even reached the carriage, they crying, “Help, help, those who would save the King!” The leader of these frantically-daring young men was one Baron de Batz, a man of extremely adventurous tendencies. Chiefly by his means, three thousand young men had combined to effect this diversion in the King’s favor, and they were to respond to the call to arms led by Batz. The three thousand made no reply; the seven or eight devoted men stood alone in the midst of nearly a quarter of a million of armed enemies. But some mercy was shown them, for those about them did not massacre the youths,—they were all very young. They even escaped into a side street; but here they were fallen upon by a squad of gendarmes, rapidly told off for that purpose; and being caught sword-in-hand, they were shot down, and left where they fell. CHAPTER LIV. EXECUTION OF LOUIS XVI. As the Place de la Revolution, the place of execution, came in view, a ray of sunshine fell upon the guillotine—one of those coincidences which the superstitious and the wonder-loving remember and treasure up. This open space was filled with a hundred thousand of the lowest rabble; soldiers thick about the scaffold; and high above the people stood a something, the woodwork of which was painted a blood-color. This was the _guillotine_! The guillotine had only just been introduced. It had been invented in Italy, and imported into France by a humane doctor, named Guillotin, whose name was cruelly taken and applied to the machine, an “e” being added to make it feminine—for, according to the custom of most men in most times, a something terrible and merciless is always feminine. If the women had the naming, perhaps the other gender would as frequently be applied to things of terror. The guillotine was essentially a humane invention. Previous to its introduction, the condemned man knelt down and placed his head on a block. A headsman then with an axe endeavored to sever the head from the body. The least swaying on his part, and instead of death, a wound was the result. Often an executioner, unnerved by the failure of his first blow, would hack and chop many times before the victim ceased to show signs of life, and before the head was off the body. The guillotine exactly fell in with the views of the equallist Republicans, for they objected to the executioner, because it was a disgrace to a man to be an executioner. On the other hand, the guillotine, consisting of a heavy, razor-like knife, which worked in grooves, and fell upon a neck irrevocably placed below the knife, the head was separated at a blow, in a moment, and death achieved with the least possible cruelty.