GUILLOTINE PARTY
James T. Farrell
ESUS, I PITY THE POOR BASTARD.
Just think, tomorrow
~~J
while I'm comfortably taking my afternoon siesta, well, this poor
guy, he'll be in such a condition that his head won't know where
his neck is," Jack Soules languidly said.
"Jack, you're ghastly," Mrs. Soules said.
They were part of a group which had been gathered toge–
ther nondescriptly and as one of the accidents of travel in the
semi-modern apartment of Art Reynolds, an American novelist,
on the
Rue de Ia Glacier.
They were talking, eating sandwiches,
drinking wine and coffee, yawning, waiting for dawn when they
would go around the corner to witness a guillotining at the
Boulevard Arago
and the
Rue de la Sante.
"Now if I were still on the
Times Picayune,
instead of lead–
ing my quiet and leisurely life, why I'd like to cover a story like
this. Such a story is worth yards of furniture sale and depart–
ment store advertising. Love crime. With true Gallic sense a
titi
from
Montmartre
saves his girl friend's soul. And how does
he manage this noble achievement? He ups and slays the dame,
and then says rosaries over her dead body until it stinks so that
the neighbors call in the
flies.
And now he expiates the crime,"
said Jack Soules, his voice flowing in a drawl that was occasional–
ly punctuated with a mid-western accent.
"It's an utterly fascinating crime. I'm going to write a
story about it, and call it
The Perfect
Passio~z,"
frail Alvin Dill–
ing lisped, rolling amorous eyes at Chuck Smith.
"Alvin, do it, please, I know you can make an exquisite thing
out of it. I have faith in you, if you can only get back to your
writing," Chuck said lovingly.
"At all events, this poor unfortunate will have lived longer
than the President of France. That's fate," Morton Brooks, a
University of Chicago graduate studying history at the Sor–
bonne, said.
"Small loss," said Jacques Sorel, poet and translator, in an
accent. "Small loss. The assassination of the President of
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