“Do you really think so?” asked M. Frémont. “Yet in France and Italy, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the flower of their chivalry must have been very slender. The royal coats of mail belonging to the end of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance times were skilfully wrought, and damascened and chased with exquisite art, yet so narrow in the shoulders are they and so meagre in figure, that a man of our day could only wear them with difficulty. They were almost all made for small, slight men, and in fact, French portraits of the fifteenth century, and the miniatures of Jehan Foucquet show us a world of almost stunted folk.” Léon entered with the key, in a great state of excitement. “It is fixed for to-morrow,” he said to his master. “Deibler and his assistants came by the half-past three train. They went to the Hôtel de Paris, but there they wouldn’t take them in. Then they went to the inn at the bottom of Duroc Hill, _le Cheval Bleu_, a regular cut-throat place.” “Ah, yes,” said Frémont, “I heard this morning at the prefecture that there was an execution in your town. The topic was in everybody’s mouth.” “There are so few amusements in the provinces!” said M. de Terremondre. “But that spirit,” said M. Bergeret, “is revolting. A legal execution takes place in secret. But why should we still carry it on at all, if we are ashamed of it? President Grévy, who was a man of great insight, practically abolished the death penalty, by never passing a sentence of death. Would that his successors had followed his example! Personal security in the modern state is not obtained by mere fear of punishment. Many European nations have now abolished the death penalty, and in such countries crime is no more common than in the nations where this base custom yet exists. And even in countries where this practice is still found, it is in a weak and languishing condition, no longer retaining power or efficacy. It is nothing but a piece of useless unseemliness, for the practice is a mere survival of the principle on which it rested. Those ideas of right and justice which formerly laid men’s heads low in majestic fashion are now shaken to their roots by the morality which has blossomed upon the natural sciences. And since the death penalty is visibly on the point of death, the wisest thing would be to let it die.” “You are right,” said M. Frémont. “The death penalty has become an intolerable practice, since now we no longer connect any idea of expiation with it, for expiation is a purely theological notion.” “The President would certainly have sent a pardon,” said Léon, with a consequential air. “But the crime was too horrible.”