at the ecstatic height of fervor surrounding the ominous appetite of the guillotine it became fashionable for young women to wear about their pale necks a thin red string and for banquet tables to feature miniature working guillotines so that the tiny waxen people given as party favors could be inserted and decapitated by squealing flushed erotic girls who would laugh and then suck the red sugar water from the headless dollies.