'The cries of even a pig,' said Madame de Beaumont, 'make it disagreeable to kill it.'
'Sanson,' I said, 'long survived the Revolution; he made a fortune and lived in retirement at Versailles. A lady was run away with between Versailles and Paris. An elderly man, at considerable risk, stopped her horse. She was very grateful, but could not get from him his name. At last she traced him, and found that it was Sanson.'
'Sanson,' said Beaumont, 'may have been an honest man. Whenever a place of _bourreau_ is vacant, there are thirty or forty candidates, and they always produce certificates of their extraordinary kindness and humanity. It seems to be the post most coveted by men eminent for their benevolence.'
'Eighty-six,' he answered. 'One for each department.'
'About one hundred a year in all France.'
'Perhaps a couple of thousand francs a year.'
'Really,' said Ampère, 'it is one of the best parts of the patronage of the Minister of the Interior. _M. le Bourreau_ gets more than a thousand francs for each operation.'
'We pay by the piece,' I said, 'and find one operator enough for all England.'
'A friend of mine,' said Beaumont, had a remarkably good Swiss servant. His education was far above his station, and we could not find what had been his birth or his canton.
'Suddenly he became agitated and melancholy, and at last told my friend that he must leave him, and why. His father was the hereditary _bourreau_ of a Swiss canton. To the office was attached an estate, to be forfeited if the office were refused. He had resolved to take neither, and, to avoid being solicited, had left his country and changed his name. But his family had traced him, had informed him of his father's death, and had implored him to accept the succession. He was the only son, and his mother and sisters would be ruined, if he allowed it to pass to the next in order of inheritance, a distant cousin. He had not been able to persist in his refusal.'
'The husband of an acquaintance of mine,' said Madame de Beaumont, 'used to disappear for two or three hours every day. He would not tell her for what purpose. At last she found out that he was employed in the _chambre noire_, the department of the police by which letters passing through the post are opened. The duties were well paid, and she could not persuade him to give them up. They were on uneasy terms, when an accident threw a list of all the names of the _employés_ in the _chambre noire_, into the hands of an opposition editor, who published them in his newspaper.