queued daily for the guillotine had already either faced death with heroism or resigned themselves to their fate with sorrow. Such a genuine expression of intense, raw terror towards death, was thus all the more rare and heartrending, almost too painful to witness.
As the chopper fell mercilessly, the boy cried out with a thunderous final scream, "Mama!"
The onlookers below, some leisurely sewing, others snacking on fruits and nuts, had long been desensitized to the execution scene, yet were now eerily silent.
A soldier skillfully poured the head from the basket into the waiting cart below, while another expressionlessly tossed the body into another.
As the cart drove away, the executioner walked to the edge of the platform and reached out to welcome the next "lucky guy," while the cleaner indifferently swept away the accumulating blood from the guillotine onto the ground below.
The droplets of blood splashed onto the ground, pooling into a gradually deepening lake, slowly flowing towards the lower ground, bringing to mind that long-forgotten nightmare for Edith.
"Mama, don''t look! Horace don''t look!" The little boy of the Desmoulins cried, ran over to bury his head in his mother''s skirt.
Lucile comforted her son with a sad expression, and exchanged a glance with her husband.
The cart had also experienced a long and tense silence, until Danton sneered and slapped his thigh, saying coldly, "Hmph, this is the masterpiece of Robespierre and his pack of hounds! Great, truly great!"