The Count of Monte Cristo

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and we had passed the previous night at a tavern."

"Besides, it is no reason because you have not seen an execution at
Paris, that you should not see one anywhere else; when you travel, it is
to see everything. Think what a figure you will make when you are asked,
'How do they execute at Rome?' and you reply, 'I do not know'! And,
besides, they say that the culprit is an infamous scoundrel, who killed
with a log of wood a worthy canon who had brought him up like his own
son. Diable, when a churchman is killed, it should be with a different
weapon than a log, especially when he has behaved like a father. If you
went to Spain, would you not see the bull-fight? Well, suppose it is
a bull-fight you are going to see? Recollect the ancient Romans of
the Circus, and the sports where they killed three hundred lions and
a hundred men. Think of the eighty thousand applauding spectators, the
sage matrons who took their daughters, and the charming Vestals who made
with the thumb of their white hands the fatal sign that said, 'Come,
despatch the dying.'"