They say that it is nothing, — that one does not suffer; that it is an easy death. Ah! then, what do they call this agony of six weeks, — this summing-up in one day? What, then, is the anguish of this irreparable day, which is passing so slowly and yet so fast? What is this ladder of tortures which terminates in the scaffold? Are they not the same convulsions whether life is taken away drop by drop, or intellect extinguished thought by thought?