People of all conditions were there, except the very highest; but the great majority of the concourse was composed of the low populace, and the smaller bourgeoisie. Multitudes of women were there, too, from the girl of sixteen to the beldam of sixty, nor had mothers been ashamed to bring their infants in their arms into that loud and tumultuous assemblage. Loud it was and tumultuous, as all great multitudes are, unless they are convened by purposes too resolutely dark and solemn to find any vent in noise. When that is the case, let rulers beware, for peril is at hand--perhaps the beginning of the end. But this Parisian mob, although long before this period it had learned the use of barricades, though noisy, turbulent, and sometimes even violent in the demonstrations of its impatience, was anything but angry or excited. On the contrary, it seemed to be on the very tip-toe of pleasurable expectation, and from the somewhat frequent allusions to _notre bon roi_, which circulated among the better order of spectators, it would appear that the government of the Fifteenth Louis was for the moment in unusually good odor with the good folks of the metropolis. What was the spectacle to which they were looking forward with so much glee--which had brought forth young delicate girls, and tender mothers, into the streets at so early an hour--which, as the day advanced toward ten o’clock of the morning, was tempting forth laced cloaks, and rapiers, and plumed hats, and here and there, in the cumbrous carriages of the day, the proud and luxurious ladies of the gay metropolis? One glance toward the centre of the Place de Grève was sufficient to inform the dullest, for there uprose, black, grisly, horrible, a tall stout pile of some thirty feet in height, with a huge wheel affixed horizontally to the summit. Around this hideous instrument of torture was raised a scaffold hung with black cloth, and strewd with saw-dust, for the convenience of the executioners, about three feet lower than the wheel which surmounted it. Around this frightful apparatus were drawn up two companies of the French guard, forming a large hollow-square facing outward, with muskets loaded, and bayonets fixed, as if they apprehended an attempt at rescue, although from the demeanor of the people, nothing appeared at that time to be further from their thoughts than anything of the kind. Above was the executioner-in-chief, with two grim, truculent-looking assistants, making preparations for the fearful operation they were about to perform, or leaning indolently on the instruments of slaughter. By and by, as the day wore onward, and the concourse kept still increasing both in numbers and in the respectability of those who composed it, something of irritation began to show itself, mingled with the eagerness and expectation of the populace, and from some murmurs, which ran from time to time through their ranks, it would seem that they apprehended the escape of their victim.