Guillotine to Ignominy?

Up at auction in Paris last week came a rusty, mildewed guillotine certified to have cut off more than 1,000 aristocratic heads during the French Revolution. After brisk bidding it was knocked down for 30,000 francs ($1,980) to a buyer who refused to give his name. Reporters thought they recognized the owner of a brothel which boasts that its "torture room" is the most authentically equipped in Paris.

Depression being what it is in France, this struggling emporium of tourist thrills offers for 150 francs ($10) in the afternoon or 450 francs ($30) in the evening to flog soundly one of its garmentless daughters of joy, first on a certified medieval torture wheel, then on an authentic "Spanish donkey" once used by the Inquisition and finally on a guillotine hitherto of somewhat doubtful authenticity.

As a grand French finale, after the flogging, the "executioner" pulls the lever of the guillotine. The blade is so arranged that it stops with a gruesome thump just short of the flogged poule's neck, but excited tourists are found to relish the sadistic idea that it might fall all the way. Female spectators invariably scream. To prove that she has actually been flogged, the poule invites attention to the welts on her thrashed posterior, solicits tips.

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