After leaving the Vatican I walked with a friend in the gardens of the Villa Medici, where we met the Cardinal Pacca, to whom I had the honour of being introduced, and who behaved in the most polite and affable manner, conversing with me for some time in French.
On Saturday the 12th of April a criminal was guillotined in the Piazza del Popolo for committing various robberies and murders, notwithstanding he was only twenty-three years of age.
Criminals are not here arraigned before their judge and accusers, but the charge is examined and the sentence awarded in private, nor is the convict acquainted with the nature of his sentence, if the punishment of death is decreed, until the middle of the night before execution, when a priest gives the information and urges him to confession, in which case the sentence is carried into effect at nine o'clock in the morning.
Otherwise, if he refuses to confess, it is deferred until three in the afternoon.
extract from The Narrative of a Journey through France, &c. (London, 1822) by James Holman FRS, pp.153-154, edited by Joe Rizzo Naudi.