According to Robespierre, however, the axe of the guillotine did not do sufficient execution. One of his satellites announced to him the invention of an instrument which struck off nine heads at once: the discovery pleased him, and he caused several trials of this new machine to be made at _Bicêtre_. It did not answer; but human nature gained nothing by its failure. Instead of half a dozen victims a day, Robespierre wished to have daily fifty or sixty, or more; and he was but too well obeyed. Not only had he his own private lists of proscription; but all his creatures, from the president of the revolutionary tribunal down to the under-jailers, had similar lists; and the _almanac royal_, or French court calendar, was converted into one by himself. The inhabitants of the streets through which the unfortunate sufferers were carried, wearied at length by the daily sight of so melancholy a spectacle, ventured to utter complaints. Robespierre, no less suspicious than cruel, was alarmed, and, dreading an insurrection, removed the scene of slaughter. The scaffold was erected on the _Place de la Bastille_: but the inhabitants of this quarter also murmured, and the guillotine was transferred to the _Barrière St. Antoine_. Had not this modern Nero been cut off in the midst of his cruelties, it is impossible to say where he would have stopped. Being one day asked the question, he coolly answered: "The generation which has witnessed the old _règime_, will always regret it. Every individual who was more than fifteen in 1789, must be put to death: this is the only way to consolidate the revolution." It was the same in the departments as in Paris. Every where blood ran in streams. In all the principal towns the guillotine was rendered permanent, in order, as Robespierre expressed himself, to _regenerate the nation_. If this sanguinary monster did not intend to "wade through slaughter to a throne," it is certain at least that he "shut the gates of mercy on mankind." But what cannot fail to excite your astonishment and that of every thinking person, is, that, in the midst of these executions, in the midst of these convulsions of the state, in the midst of these struggles for power, in the midst of these outcries against the despots of the day, in the midst of famine even, not artificial, but real; in short, in the midst of an accumulation of horrors almost unexampled, the fiddle and tambourin never ceased. Galas, concerts, and balls were given daily in incredible numbers; and no less than from fifteen to twenty theatres, besides several, other places of public entertainment, were constantly open, and almost as constantly filled. P. S. I am this moment informed of the arrival of Lord Cornwallis. [Footnote 1: The ratio between the English fathom and the French toise, as determined between the first astronomers of both countries, is as 72 to 76.734.] LETTER XIV. _Paris, November 10, 1801._