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77ге Green Bag.

visitors, whose attention he directed to a notch in it caused by its encountering the victim's teeth. It is interesting to know that twelve years later a memorial was pre sented to Louis XVI in council by Count Lally Tollendal, son of the unfortunate

MADAME ROLAND AT THE GUILLOTINE. (From painting by Royer. )

Lally, in consequence of which a commis sion was appointed to examine into the whole case of his father. After thirty-two sittings, the commission " reversed the de cree of the 6th of May, 1768, and every thing that had followed it." From that moment General Lally Tollendal was re

instated by law, his character pronounced to be restored to honor, and the verdict of public opinion, which had always been in favor of the eccentric Lally, was approved. A more remarkable vindication after exe cution was that of Jeanne d'Arc, The Maid of Orleans, who, twenty-five years after she had been burned at the stake, was formally pronounced to have been innocent. When the States-General of France organized as the National Assembly, a name implying that in future there should be no class distinction or division, a member, Dr. Guillotin, urged that capital punishment should be brought to a democratic level, and that noble, heretic, traitor and ordin ary murderer should meet death in the same way. He had per fected a machine for decapitation, taking for his model the old Scotch instrument of death, known as the " Maiden." Guil lotin declared that decapitation by his machine would be speedy and painless, and in his speech he humorously asserted that it "would take off a head in a twinkling," and the victim feel nothing save " a sensation of re freshing coolness." The machine was adopted and has ever since borne the name of its proposer. Many of the members who had voted for its adoption met their death on its platform. It has proved a democratic machine, for king, queen, men of great culture and those of low degree, philoso phers and hardened criminals, dainty ladies and the lowest of the femmes du pave have died on the same plank. How the Scotch machine received the name of the "maiden" is not known, the commonly received conjecture being that it