Sash window

Meaning

Phrase.

Une croisée à guillotine is a sash window with a frame that slides vertically. The narrative opens its spring street view with these frames raised and householders’ heads below, just before mentioning the Revolutionary Tribunal’s clerk. The ordinary mechanism is the denotation; an echo of the execution instrument is available as an interpretive effect of the juxtaposition, not proof that the windows are actual guillotines or a prediction that each person will be executed. The translation gives “sash window” and explains the lost verbal echo in a note.