to the Pont Neuf, they passed, opposite the house where Manon Roland first saw the light, where the young republican had envied the greatness of Rome, she who to-day was meeting her doom like the greatest of the Romans. Did the vision of her past life rise before her mind's eye, as they say it does before that of a drowning man's, or did she see the phantom Twenty-one beckon her along the road they had lately gone? She was proud to follow them, carrying to the scaffold a courage as great as theirs.
A courage greater than theirs in reality. For she was not sustained by that love of comrades mutually encouraging each other with their song. In the cart beside her cowered the abject figure of an old man whose teeth chattered with terror. It was Lamarche, a forger of assignats. She tried to cheer him up, and there was a sweet gaiety in her words which at times called a feeble smile to his lips. At last they reached their destination. Who can tell what vistas of eternity had opened out to her on her way thither? Report says that at the foot of the guillotine she asked for pen and paper "to write the strange thoughts that were rising in her." The request was not granted; the strange thoughts went down with her to the silence of the grave.
Yet another request she proffered. The scaffold, too, had its etiquette, and ladies were privileged to take precedence of men in death. The brave woman, wishing to spare her companion the horror of seeing her blood spilt, asked the executioner to let him go first. Samson demurred, it being contrary to custom. But when she said to him, with a smile, "Come, you cannot refuse the last request of a lady," he succumbed.
