text:  "What sentence shall we pass on the person called Grimod ci-devant sub-collector of taxes and the woman beside him who has aided and abetted him in several attempts to escape from the censorship of the Committee of Public Safety?" The accused looked timidly round in hopes that no answer would be returned to this routine enquiry in which case their safety would have been assured; but red-capped Pindar struck his hand hurriedly over the chords and cried in the shrill sharp tones that both the prisoners remembered too well "A la mort! a la mort!" and in ten minutes their bodies were lying headless side by side amidst the hootings and howlings of ten thousand demons exemplifying to astonished Europe the perfection of civilization and philanthropy