The end is now approaching. At five in the afternoon the gendarmes come to conduct Robespierre to the scaffold. The Convention has decreed that for this occasion the guillotine shall be erected at the Place de la Révolution. Robespierre is borne on the litter through the crowd of prisoners, the victims of his hatred and his laws, and when the dying man has passed the threshold they breathe again. With him death departs and new life comes in. The tumbril is waiting in the courtyard, surrounded by a crowd of _sans-culottes_ and Mænads, and hundreds of spectators eager to witness the startling spectacle, are swarming in the streets to hoot and abuse Robespierre as heartily as they had cheered and applauded him at the Fête of the Supreme Being! To effect this startling change one sitting of the Convention has sufficed! Robespierre is now in sight. This is the signal for the wildest uproar. He is seated on a bench in the first tumbril, and fastened against the bars of the cart to keep him from falling. The fresh air has revived him; he allows them to do as they please, looking on in silent scorn. Others of the condemned are placed in the same tumbril: Augustin Robespierre, Saint-Just, Dumas the president, Hauriot, and Couthon. The two last are seated right and left of Robespierre. Four other carts follow, equally loaded. The condemned number twenty-two in all. Now Robespierre's _via dolorosa_ begins. Abuse and insults rain down on them in torrents, covering Robespierre and his accomplices with ignominy. The ghastly procession crosses the Pont-au-Change, the Quay de la Mégisserie, and passing the Rue de la Monnaie it enters the Rue Saint-Honoré. Curses are heard mingling with the shrieks of the rabble, for among the crowd there are many victims of the Terror, widows and orphans conjuring up the memory of all their anguish, all the drama of the guillotine, the work of the Incorruptible. A woman clutches at the tumbril in which Robespierre sits, a woman whose two children had been torn from her by the Prairial law. "Monster!" she cries, "vile monster! in the name of all mothers, I curse you to hell!" The crowd following the _cortège_ grows denser as it proceeds. It is _Decadi_, the Republican Sunday. All Paris is out of doors. The windows and balconies are thronged with men and women in festal attire, pressing forward to see the procession file past, and showering down shouts of joy and triumph, for the passing of those tumbrils means also the passing away of the reign of Terror.