Only a few curls were cut off, those only which fell at the back, the
others were tied with a ribbon on the top of the head. The executioner
then tied his hands on his breast, but as that position was oppressive to
him and compelled him an account of his wound to bend his head, his hands
were laid flat on his thighs and fixed in that position with ropes.
Then, when his eyes were about to be bound, he begged Mr. Widemann to
place the bandage in such a manner that he could see the light to his
last moment. His wish was fulfilled.

Then a profound and mortal stillness hovered over the whole crowd and
surrounded the scaffold. The executioner drew his sword, which flashed
like lightning and fell. Instantly a terrible cry rose at once from
twenty thousand bosoms; the head had not fallen, and though it had sunk
towards the breast still held to the neck. The executioner struck a
second time, and struck off at the same blow the head and a part of the
hand.

In the same moment, notwithstanding the efforts of the soldiers, their
line was broken through; men and women rushed upon the scaffold, the
blood was wiped up to the last drop with handkerchiefs; the chair upon
which Sand had sat was broken and divided into pieces, and those who
could not obtain one, cut fragments of bloodstained wood from the
scaffold itself.

The head and body were placed in a coffin draped with black, and carried
back, with a large military escort, to the prison. At midnight the body
was borne silently, without torches or lights, to the Protestant
cemetery, in which Kotzebue had been buried fourteen months previously.
A grave had been mysteriously dug; the coffin was lowered into it, and