St Andrew's cross

The St Andrew's cross was the execution apparatus constructed for Jean-Baptiste Grenouille's public execution on the parade grounds before the city gates of Grasse. Built by carpenters as a nine-foot-square scaffold six feet high, with a railing and a sturdy set of stairs, it was the finest such structure Grasse had ever seen. The cross itself consisted of two wooden beams forming an X shape, set at a working height by being propped on four carpenter's horses and nailed down by a journeyman carpenter. The executioner, Monsieur Papon, had a heavy squared iron rod forged for the occasion and practiced blows on carcasses at the slaughterhouse, for he was permitted only twelve hits and had to crush all twelve joints without damaging vital body parts like the chest or head.

The Scaffold as Spectacle and Stage

The cross was the centerpiece of a carefully orchestrated public event. A wooden grandstand was built for local notables, and a fence separated them from the common people, who were kept at a distance. Places at windows in buildings flanking the porte du Cours and in the guardhouse had been rented out at exorbitant rates. The executioner's assistants even leased rooms from the patients in the charité and resold them to curious spectators at a handsome profit. Lemonade vendors stocked up, an etcher printed hundreds of copies of his sketch of the murderer, itinerant pedlars streamed into town, and bakers baked souvenir biscuits. The citizens readied themselves as if for a high holiday: women ironed their holiday dresses, men dusted off their frock coats and had their boots polished, and anyone holding military rank, public office, or guild mastership donned uniform or official garb with medals, sashes, chains, and powdered periwigs.

The Reversal at the Cross

When Grenouille arrived in a carriage — an unprecedented mode of transport for a condemned man — he stepped out wearing a blue frock coat, white shirt, white silk stockings, and buckled black shoes, unbound and unled. The moment he appeared, the ten thousand assembled spectators felt themselves infused with the unshakeable belief that he could not possibly be a murderer. The executioner Papon, who had been standing on the scaffold platform with his iron rod, found his strong arms suddenly weak, his knees wobbly, his heart anxious as a child's; he had to prop himself up with the rod to keep from sinking feebly to his knees. The footman beside Grenouille sank to the ground in full prostration. The officer of the guard and the police lieutenant, whose duty was to lead the condemned man to the scaffold, could no longer manage coordinated action: they wept, removed their hats, cast themselves to the ground, fell into each other's arms, and flapped their arms absurdly. The scheduled execution degenerated into the largest orgy the world had seen since the second century before Christ, with respectable women ripping open their blouses, men copulating in impossible positions and combinations, and the air heavy with the sweet odour of sweating lust.

Aftermath and Erasure

After Grenouille had been carried to Laure Richis's bed and the verdict overturned, the town council met and unanimously resolved "immediately to have the scaffold and grandstand on the parade grounds dismantled and to have the trampled fields surrounding them restored to their former orderly state," appropriating 160 livres for the purpose. The judges agreed without debate to regard the case as settled, to close the files, to place them in the archives without registry, and to open new proceedings against the thus-far unidentified murderer of twenty-five maidens. Dominique Druot was arrested, tortured, and executed by hanging at dawn without any fuss, without scaffold or grandstand, with only the hangman, a magistrate, a doctor, and a priest in attendance. The town forgot the event so totally that travellers who passed through in the following days and casually inquired about Grasse's infamous murderer found not a single sane person who could give them any information.