Note 31 — A TRIP TO PARIS.

On the 28th of March, 1757, Damiens, who stabbed Lewis XV. was executed in the Place de Grêve, four horses were to pull his arms and legs from his body: they were fifty minutes pulling in vain, and at last his joints were obliged to be cut: he supported these torments patiently, and expired whilst the tendons of his shoulders were cutting, though he was living after his legs and thighs had been torn from his body; his right hand had previously been cut off. I was in Paris in 1768, and then, and at various times since have been assured by eye-witnesses, that almost all the windows of the square where the execution was performed were hired by ladies, at from two to ten louis each.

Mr. Thicknesse in his "Year's journey through France and Part of Spain," in a letter dated Dijon, in Burgundy, 1776, mentions a man whom he saw broke alive on the wheel by, "the executioner and his mother, who assisted at this horrid business, these both seemed to enjoy the deadly office."

I have formerly given an account of the Spanish ladies enjoying the barbarities of the bull-fights.