In 1793, the Reign of Terror, already intense, ratcheted up to a higher gear. In October Marie Antoinette was sent to the guillotine. The following month, as Lavoisier and his wife were making tardy plans to slip away to Scotland, Lavoisier was arrested.
1793年,已經很緊張的“恐怖統治”達到了一個新的高度。10月,瑪麗·安托瓦妮特被送上斷頭臺。11月,正當拉瓦錫和他的妻子在拖拖拉拉地制訂計劃準備逃往蘇格蘭的時候,他被捕了。
In May he and thirty-one fellow farmers-general were brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal (in a courtroom presided over by a bust of Marat). Eight were granted acquittals, but Lavoisier and the others were taken directly to the Place de la Revolution (now the Place de la Concorde), site of the busiest of French guillotines. Lavoisier watched his father-in-law beheaded, then stepped up and accepted his fate. Less than three months later, on July 27, Robespierre himself was dispatched in the same way and in the same place, and the Reign of Terror swiftly ended.
次年5月,他和31名稅務總公司的同事一起被送上了革命法庭(在一個放著馬拉半身像的審判室里)。其中8人被無罪釋放,但拉瓦錫和其他幾人被直接帶到革命廣場(現在的協和廣場),也就是設置法國那個最忙碌的斷頭臺的地方。拉瓦錫望著他的岳父腦袋落地,然后走上前去接受同樣的命運。不到3個月,7月27日,羅伯斯庇爾被以同樣的方式、在同一地點送上了西天。恐怖統治很快結束了。
A hundred years after his death, a statue of Lavoisier was erected in Paris and much admired until someone pointed out that it looked nothing like him. Under questioning the sculptor admitted that he had used the head of the mathematician and philosopher the Marquis de Condorcet—apparently he had a spare—in the hope that no one would notice or, having noticed, would care. In the second regard he was correct. The statue of Lavoisier-cum-Condorcet was allowed to remain in place for another half century until the Second World War when, one morning, it was taken away and melted down for scrap.
他去世100年以后,一座拉瓦錫的雕像在巴黎落成,受到很多人的瞻仰,直到有人指出它看上去根本不像他。在盤問之下,雕刻師承認,他用了數學家和哲學家孔多塞的頭像——他顯然備了一個——希望誰也不會注意到,或者即使注意到也不會在乎。他的后一種想法是正確的。拉瓦錫兼孔多塞的雕像被準許留在原地,又留了半個世紀,直到第二次世界大戰爆發。一天早晨,有人把它取走,當做廢鐵熔化了。