Читать книгу Rogues and Adventuresses - Charles Kingston - Страница 3

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If Infamy has its immortals the name of Lacenaire can never die, and, as the most remarkable if not the greatest of French criminals was made the subject of a character study by Victor Hugo in “Les Miserables,” he must share in the immortality of the immortal Frenchman. Yet it is not easy to see why this scoundrel should have attracted the attention he did, or why for a period all France should have regarded him as of far greater importance than a revolution. But Lacenaire succeeded in hypnotizing his country and he achieved this by the pose of philosopher in the condemned cell. Inspired by a vanity which had been his special vice from childhood, he laughed in the face of death because he was philosopher enough to realize that it is always better to laugh than to cry, and by thus making a virtue of necessity he became a personality as he strutted towards the guillotine, inspired and encouraged by the knowledge that the world was watching him. He had at last captured the popular imagination, having, like so many other poets, obtained a reputation on hearsay—for editors had declined his contributions because his very inferior productions had yet to be rendered marketable by their author turning murderer. When he did, the news that there was a professional criminal who was an author, poet and philosopher, gave France a new thrill, even in an age when thrills were plentiful. The man in the café declared that Lacenaire was unique and that there never had been a criminal like him, and as there is no place in the world where sentiment is so cheap as in France, there were many who wished that the poet and philosopher could have been saved from the guillotine. But the bare truth is that Lacenaire was a criminal and little else. He was a common thief, a clumsy forger and a cowardly and bloodthirsty murderer. He had not a spark of chivalry in his composition and his sense of honour was as deficient as his sense of humour. In fact, a born criminal, one foredoomed from his earliest years to a disgraceful life and an ignominious death.

It is not difficult to trace the growth of the criminal germ in Pierre François Gaillard, better known by the name of Lacenaire, which he conferred on himself. His father was a fairly prosperous iron merchant who resided near Lyons, and Lacenaire was sent to a good class school. The boy, shallow and a boaster, early evinced that effeminacy which is always accompanied by cunning, cowardice and craft. Unwilling to join in the usual sports of boyhood, he led a more or less isolated existence, suffering tortures at the hands of bullies until his nimble brain devised schemes for their discomfiture. Thus he acquired his first lessons in the art of meeting physical force with craft, and so the child grew to believe that nothing mattered except the end, and that the means, however dishonest, which achieved that end were fully justified. The brooding, moody child grew into a sly and effeminate young man, sufficiently educated to be able to deceive himself with cant phrases and a bogus philosophy. He would have preferred to live in vicious idleness, but his father’s affairs were not prospering, and Lacenaire was sent off to Paris to study for the law. His evil tendencies had already exhibited themselves, but his parents hoped that they were merely the passing indiscretions of youth, and with astonishing optimism they let loose in Paris this pale-faced, delicate-looking man with the deep, penetrating eyes and long, thin hands, which he had once referred to in a moment of philosophic candour as having been made for strangling.

In Paris Lacenaire was fortunate to make many acquaintances, who would have developed into powerful and loyal friends had his temperament permitted, but his vanity, spite and boastfulness alienated them, and when he ended a series of quarrels by shooting the nephew of Benjamin Constant in a duel, practically every door in Paris was closed against him. Those who were acquainted with the facts of the case never wavered in their belief that Lacenaire murdered his opponent, and the fact that the successful duellist never attempted to bring any of his calumniators into court was practically an admission of guilt.

However, the duel was to bring to fruition all those vicious and criminal imaginings which had been growing in the mind of Lacenaire since boyhood. Finding himself in the position of a pariah he determined to make war on the society which thus openly despised him, but the eagerness with which he turned professional criminal was an indication that sooner or later he would have taken to crime for a living.

Shortly after the unfortunate duel his father failed, and Lacenaire, deprived of an allowance, at once sank into a lower stratum of society than his ostracism by his former friends entailed. At one step he became a member of a class which does not know the dividing line between poverty and crime, and it was not long before he attained a leading position in the underworld by reason of his debonair manners and swaggering air of superiority. Criminals who could scarcely read regarded with awe this good-looking young man who boasted of a luxurious childhood and affected a profound knowledge of literature and politics. Gossip reported that once he had been received at the houses of ministers and that he had been acquainted with royalty itself. Determined to make use of the boasting young fool, they flattered and toadied to him, and Lacenaire immediately took up the pose of philosopher and poet, and boasted of the wonderful powers he possessed and of the fortune he would lead them to if only they obeyed him.

However, it became absolutely necessary that Lacenaire should obtain some sort of regular employment, and as an ex-law student there was only one occupation open to him, that of lawyer’s clerk. The family influence was still strong enough to secure him a post, but Lacenaire was anxious that his fellow clerks and their friends should understand that he was no ordinary employé. To impress this upon them he gave a dinner at a café to celebrate what he called his entry into the ranks of the workers.

The guests were chiefly lawyers’ clerks, amongst them being a youngster of the name of Claude. He had never seen his host before, and, having been warned that he was about to be entertained by an aristocratic-looking man who was much too good for work of any sort, he was surprised to see at the head of the table an over-dressed person whose obvious effeminacy could not conceal the fact that his thin body possessed a supple strength which was in keeping with the vicious luminosity of dark, deep-set eyes.

The dinner was an uproarious success, and Lacenaire was gratified by the deference paid to him by those he patronizingly called his “colleagues.” In his concluding speech he thanked them with the air of an emperor, and he was really eloquent as he described how within a few hours he would lay aside the character of idler and dilettante and take his place amongst those who had to fight the battle of life in the ranks. They applauded that sentiment, for they had drunk his wine, and the man who pays for the dinner has no critics.

In the early hours of the morning the café disgorged a flushed and excited troop of young men, and it so befell that Claude, the youthful clerk, walked away arm in arm with the head clerk in the office where Lacenaire was due to begin work at nine o’clock.

“What do you think of him?” asked the older man, who had been fascinated by the silky personality of his latest clerk.

“He has the eyes of a wild beast,” was the unexpected answer, “and for all his gentleness and politeness I would not trust him anywhere.”

The critic’s words were drowned in a roar of derisive laughter, but they were recalled by the head clerk a few hours later, when on entering the office he found that the safe had been broken open and the contents stolen, while there was no sign of Lacenaire. That was no legal proof that the latter was the thief, but it required no great intelligence to connect him with the affair, for on the occasions of his visits when negotiating for employment he had done all in his power to ingratiate himself with the head clerk, who now recollected that the charming young man more than once brought the conversation round to the safe, and had led him into discussing how it was opened and what it usually contained.

Six months later Lacenaire was actually under arrest, but on another charge, for the criminal who later on boasted that he was a Napoleon of the underworld began with a mean and petty theft in a café. The fact, however, that he had been a law student and was well related was sufficient to lift the affair out of the commonplace, and his trial and conviction created something of a sensation in the comparatively limited circle in which he had been known, for a few years were to elapse before the thief turned murderer and achieved international infamy.

Other experiences of prison followed, and if Lacenaire was usually unsuccessful he was perfecting his pose of super-criminal so that when he launched out he might be able to give some distinction to the character. Vanity was his chief prop in times when failure proved that he was a conspirator of no originality or courage, and the adulation of the ignorant was the only comfort he had when striving to make the most of his little stock of knowledge.

A memorable incident now happened which was to have remarkable and sensational consequences.

He was in Poissy jail when he met a journalist, a political prisoner, and the result of the meeting was that Lacenaire wrote an article for the journalist’s paper on penal methods. It was a creditable production in the circumstances, but in no way remarkable, and only vanity could have discovered in it proof of that genius which henceforth Lacenaire claimed for himself. He talked of devoting himself to literature and started to write a play, but the time was approaching when the unsuccessful thief determined to try his hand at the most serious of all crimes. Literature was abandoned, and the criminal dilettante of the underworld resolved to make a bold bid for recognition as its king by putting his courage and his craft to a supreme test.

When, before his death, he was asked why he had not utilized for money-making purposes the literary gifts of which he boasted, he replied: “I had to choose between writing a play and murder, and I chose murder because it was easier.”

Had he been truthful, however, he would have admitted that even had he possessed the necessary talent he would have disdained honest work because his vanity had become so intense that he could not believe he could fail to outwit society.

Had Lacenaire’s intelligence or courage equalled his vanity he would not at this stage of his career have taken a partner, but in the case of a man who needed no incentive to self-flattery, blunders were bound to be frequent. It may have been that when he joined forces with Pierre Victor Avril he required a servant rather than an equal, but the underlying reason was that he had not the necessary physical or mental courage to commit murder alone. Avril, a companion picked up in jail, called himself a joiner, but having worked at that trade on occasions so rare the description was apt to bring a smile to the lips of anyone who heard it. However, he was a bloodthirsty ruffian, who, if only by means of contrast, flattered the senior member of the firm, who was now thirty-four, and in spite of all his vicissitudes was looking his best. One who met him at the time described him as possessing the lofty forehead of the thinker and features which were refined and compelling. Able to make the most of his small stock of learning, he could give a varnish to the most revolting of acts and inspire even in men like Avril a sort of vicious admiration.

Lacenaire’s imprisonment at Poissy, in 1829, appears to have influenced almost every act of his life up to the final catastrophe in January, 1836. We have seen that it was in Poissy he found his only employment as a journalist, and it was there he came upon his future partner. And where he found Avril he also found a victim, although it was not until 1834—five years later—that he recalled Chardon, the miser of infamous habits, who now lived in a garret in the Rue St. Martin with his mother, a helpless invalid. Chardon was a vile product of a festering city, despised even by the worst of criminals, one who went through life in a sort of slime, a typical inhabitant of the underworld of the underworld. With an insolent hypocrisy which was almost pathetic in its ineffectiveness he claimed membership of a religious brotherhood, but it was neither his vileness nor his hypocrisy that attracted Lacenaire’s attention. In the neighbourhood of the Rue St. Martin it was believed that Chardon had accumulated a fortune which he kept in specie in his garret, and it was that fortune that tempted Lacenaire. Of course, as a philosopher, he had to give his crime a higher motive than greed, and he, therefore, called it revenge for an insult alleged to have been received from Chardon at Poissy, but it was the prospect of laying his hands on gold that caused Lacenaire to take Avril to a café near the residence of the Chardons on the morning of February 14th, 1834, to discuss and plan a double murder.

Lacenaire despised Avril because he was one of the common people, but secretly he admired a man who had once very nearly killed a warder in a fit of temper. His own exploits had not hitherto risen higher than robbing a till, and thus he regarded Avril with a respect he would not reveal, because it was not part of the Lacenaire philosophy to show respect to anyone of inferior birth.

There is little doubt that Lacenaire would have preferred to work on his own, but he had not the courage to face even the debilitated and nervous Chardon, and it is significant that when the two men went from the wineshop to the house of the Chardons it was Avril who entered first on the invitation of Chardon.

“Come in, gentlemen, and sit down,” said the doomed wretch, who recognized two former friends in misfortune and therefore did not distrust them.

They were to be his last words in this world, for as he was bowing to them the philosopher and his hired assassin sprang upon him and while Avril’s fingers closed round his throat Lacenaire stabbed him again and again in the back until he sank without life to the floor. There Avril finished him off with a hatchet while his partner crept into the next room and murdered the helpless old woman.

Undeterred by the ghostly presence of the corpse, the two men searched for the many thousands of francs they believed to be concealed in the room, but all they secured for their trouble was five hundred francs and a statuette, which proved of no value.

The two murderers behaved with a coolness which seems to suggest that they felt that the murder of Chardon would be regarded by the public as an act of justice, and that in any event the police would not be in a hurry to avenge his death. Whatever the reason, however, they ran quite unnecessary risks, actually lunching together in a restaurant close by, although their clothes were bloodstained. But Lacenaire, at any rate, had enjoyed the thrill of his first big crime. He felt he was no longer a mere talker; at last he had done something in his own opinion to justify his continual boastings; and he had, in fact, achieved some of his perverted ambitions.

From the café they went to a Turkish bath and, having got rid of the blood-stains, separated, Lacenaire to spend the remainder of the day and most of the night reading Rousseau; Avril to spend his share of the profits in a carousal which lasted until dawn, although he and Lacenaire had already planned their second murder and had agreed to resume work the next day.

They were determined, however, that their next murder should be a much more profitable one, and as it was two days before the double crime in the Rue St. Martin was discovered, they were feeling particularly pleased with themselves and supremely confident when disguised as law students—Avril must have been a very comical travesty of one—they engaged a room in Rue Montorgueil. Lacenaire was now Mahossier, which name he chalked on the door of his new lodgings, but it was unnecessary to rechristen his partner, who was to remain in the background until some unfortunate bank-messenger with a large sum on him was lured into the room which, Lacenaire grimly remarked, would not take long to convert into a mortuary.

Avril was inclined to grumble at the small profits of the first murder, but Lacenaire, who was philosophical enough to accept the inevitable and who never wasted his regrets on what-might-have-beens, affected to be delighted.

“We have done something more than make money, my dear comrade,” he said. “We have achieved the perfect crime. Think of it! We walk into the house in daylight and kill two vermin and we walk out again and no one suspects us. That is an achievement, and if you were an artist you would be proud of it.”

The reasoning was too much for the turgid brain of the ex-joiner, whose dissatisfaction changed to dismay only when two days after the murders in the Rue St. Martin the Paris police discovered the bodies. Had it not been for the unnecessary assassination of the old woman the police might not have done more than make a perfunctory attempt to solve the mystery, but they were roused by the brutality of criminals who had suffocated the old lady, and Avril, an easy prey to terror, unable to discover in Rousseau an opiate for a guilty conscience, spent most of his hours in cafés and drank himself into a delirium of forgetfulness. Had he been able to keep his head all might have been well, but forgetting Lacenaire’s maxim that a murderer should not demean himself by indulging in petty crimes, he reverted to his usual profession of thieving, blundered, and was arrested.

When the news reached Lacenaire at 66 Rue Montorgueil, it drove him into a paroxysm of rage. But as Avril knew all his secrets and was almost indispensable to him he made an effort to rescue him from the police, failing because they would not allow the ex-convict out on such security as Lacenaire could offer. Thus it became necessary for the latter to find a fresh partner, and he began a tour of the cafés and wine-shops in search of one.

It was not an easy task. Paris was plentifully supplied with criminals of all sorts and conditions, but philosophers who are murderers are rare and Lacenaire was particular. He required an assistant whom he could dominate and influence, some one better than a mere brute who would be impervious to arguments however epigrammatic or poetical. He was not, of course, satisfied when after some disappointments he was obliged to accept the cooperation of a burly ex-soldier whose family name was François, but who was known in the circle he honoured with his presence as Red Whiskers. François’ position in the criminal underworld of Paris may be gauged by the fact that everybody knew his criminal tariff, which was brief enough to be memorized easily. For five francs he was willing to break into any house in France; for ten he would undertake a commission to disable anyone, and for twenty francs he guaranteed murder. In fact, a choice specimen of the primitive ruffian.

A favourite café of Lacenaire’s was the scene of the first meeting of the philosopher and the ex-soldier, and the partnership might have been sealed there and then by much red wine had it not been that François, unable to understand his new acquaintance’s flowery language, decided that he was either a lunatic or a police spy.

“I must have proof that you are straight,” he said, after listening to a philosophic oration on the grandeur of crime, not a word of which he had understood. “You can talk, my friend, but so can the police when they have a mind to.”

“You despise me because you think I am a mere amateur,” exclaimed Lacenaire resentfully, “but I have graduated in your university and taken higher honours than yourself, my good François. Have you heard of the murders in the Rue St. Martin? Well, I killed the Chardons.”

The disclosure removed the ex-soldier’s doubts, and there was admiration in his eyes as he held out the hand which grasped Lacenaire’s.

“I am with you,” he cried, and they drank to each other like comrades.

“Then come with me to 66 Rue Montorgueil,” said Lacenaire, who was always anxious to get to work when money was short. “I have arranged to trap a bank-messenger there, and there ought to be ten thousand francs for each of us if we succeed.”

The plans of the philosopher and murderer lacked nothing by way of completeness that day in December, 1834. He had foreseen everything and had prepared carefully every step of his crime. He had begun with a visit to a bank and the presentation of a bill drawn on a certain M. Mahossier, payable on December 31st at 66 Rue Montorgueil. This meant that on that date a bank-messenger would call and present the bill for payment, and as he would previously have been to other houses and collected money Lacenaire had every reason to expect that his third victim would yield him many thousands of francs.

On the morning of December 31st Lacenaire’s programme was complete. Dressed in his best clothes he reclined on a sofa reading his favourite Rousseau. Behind the sofa was a sack half filled with straw which he intended to hold the body of the murdered bank-messenger, and in a corner of the room was a large trunk which was to be utilized to convey the corpse to a deserted villa in a distant suburb where it was to be destroyed in a furnace. In fact, Lacenaire planned to be the first of the “trunk-murderers,” and it was only an accident that deprived him of that “distinction.”

The stage was now fully set for the third murder, and Lacenaire, who had become so natural a poseur that he could see nothing fantastic in an attempt to impress François with a display of philosophic calm, was apparently engrossed in his book when there was a knock at the door, the signal for action, although the intended victim could not be expected to know that.

François promptly threw open the door to admit a youth of eighteen, slim and delicate, of the name of Genevay. They saw that he carried a small black bag, which their imagination filled with wealth, and that only a fragile life stood between them and the money for which they craved. Lacenaire lost not a second in coming to grips, and as the youth bent over the bag which he had placed on the table the philosopher stabbed him in the back with the sharpened file which had already proved itself a reliable and trustworthy weapon in the Rue St. Martin.

But this time he was not dealing with a prematurely aged man whose strength had long since been sapped by vice. Genevay may not have been a Hercules, but he had the lungs of youth, and the first sharp pain set him yelling for help. It was such a lusty yell that François, whose appearance seemed to suggest that he knew no such thing as nerves, lost his head, and forgetting everything except the danger of publicity, dashed from the room and fled headlong down the stairs. To infect Lacenaire with his terror was an easy matter, and before Genevay’s wound was being attended to by a doctor his assailants were far off and well under cover.

The failure of the plot on which he had counted so much demoralized Lacenaire, and, hunger and privation proving too much for his flimsy armour of philosophy, he became a petty thief, which was, perhaps, more in keeping with his real character. But he was not to be successful even in his pettiness, and shortly after François was arrested for theft Lacenaire joined him in the same jail on a similar charge. This meant that the police had safely caged the two assassins of the Rue St. Martin and the two would-be assassins of the Rue Montorgueil, for it will be remembered that Avril was already in jail. But they were ignorant of the fact that they had the murderers of the Chardons under lock and key, and had it not been for the hostility aroused by Lacenaire’s contemptuous attitude towards his fellow prisoners the mystery might never have been solved. However, François, with that eagerness to betray which is characteristic of the average criminal, decided to save his own skin by sacrificing Lacenaire, and when the ruffian made his confession Lacenaire’s active career was as good as finished.

But Lacenaire had a confession to make too, for he was not to be outdone by a mere vulgarian who had proved himself so unworthy of his society, and when the philosopher started to confess he left nothing to the imagination of the police, not sparing either himself or his late comrade in crime, Avril. Mingling detail with epigram, he betrayed his friend with an enthusiasm which revealed fully the blood lust of the man whose only terror was lest he should die alone.

“I shall see Avril and François die first,” he boasted to the police, “and then I will lay my head under the knife with relief. After all, death is merely an operation, the success of which depends on what use one has made of one’s life.”

Lacenaire slept soundly through the night in his dismal cell and awoke the next morning to find himself famous. Paris, for once satiated with revolutions and politics, succumbed to the claim of the murderer, out of whom rumour manufactured many sensations. It was whispered in the boulevards that he was a great poet and a brilliant essayist, and that all his misfortunes were due to the fact that he had been repudiated by his father, who was said to have been a royal prince. All this was pure imagination, of course; but when the gossip filtered through to the prison, Lacenaire felt that he had achieved something at last. He was a third-rate poet and a tenth-rate murderer, but he had captured the imagination of the crowd, and it was something to be a hero in cynical Paris, even if the last act was to feature the guillotine. When he heard that those verses of his which had been rejected contemptuously by every editor in Paris were now being printed and circulated by the hundred thousand, his vanity was comical in its gravity, and he immediately set about composing fresh poems, writing freely and unfettered because he knew that as a dying man he owed no allegiance either to king or to convention.

LACENAIRE (PIERRE FRANÇOIS GAILLARD)

His jailers, proud of a publicity in which they shared, humoured him without weakening the bars of his cage. But they were showmen now rather than jailers, and they acted as supers at the receptions in the prison attended by all sorts and conditions of Parisians in honour of the hero of the hour. What with his receptions, his literary work, and the necessity for providing each day with at least one epigram for quotation and repetition in the cafés, Lacenaire’s weeks of imprisonment before his trial passed quickly enough. Fully aware that society was going to cut off his head, not because he had murdered an infamous man and his helpless mother, but because he had attacked property in the person of the bank-messenger, Genevay, he did not commit the blunder of indulging in self-pity. His vanity saved him from that, and it was the only practical good he ever got out of a vice which had changed the morose child into a criminal.

The trial of the three prisoners, who were charged with murder, swindling and forgery, began on November 12th, 1835, and lasted nearly four days. A crowded court gratified the principal prisoner, who was anxious to prove himself equal to an occasion which promised to provide him with plenty of opportunities for histrionic display. He entered the court proudly conscious that although there were three on trial the public had already forgotten Avril and François. He knew it was Lacenaire they wished to see, and he did not disappoint them. Almost every day while in prison he had rehearsed his behaviour in court, and he was so word and action perfect that he was hardly ever at a disadvantage even with the dignified judge. His candour was as amazing as his coolness. Nothing disturbed or perturbed him, and he replied to the questions of the President of the Court with a frankness which would have gained sympathy for him had his recital not consisted of one horror after another.

“I have known Chardon since 1830,” he said, in a quiet, conversational tone, “but visited him only once; Avril went several times. We learned that he was to receive money from the Queen, and it was said to be an advance of 10,000 francs. I did not learn this from either of my fellow-prisoners, but from a person whom I will not name. I went to engage Frechard in the murder, who, however, declined. I cannot say whether the idea of the murder originated with me, or with Avril. I was armed with an awl, but Avril had no weapon. According to an agreement between us, Avril seized Chardon by the throat, while I stabbed him with the awl, and as Chardon struggled hard Avril seized the hammer-hatchet which was hanging behind the door, and finished the business.

“While Avril was thus engaged, I went into the room beyond, where I found Madame Chardon in bed, and killed her with the awl. Avril took no part in this second murder, as he did not enter the room till I was pressing the mattress upon the body. I was wounded in the hand by the awl, in consequence of it having only a cork for the handle, and the end of it was forced through by the violence of the blows. We carried off some plate, a sum of 500 f., and some clothes, besides an ivory figure of the Virgin, which we fancied was of value, but afterwards threw into the river, as we were offered only 3 f. for it. Avril sold Chardon’s cloak for 20 f., at the Temple, which sum he retained for himself. After the murder we went to bathe at the Bains Turcs, and, having cleaned away all the spots of blood, Avril went and sold the plate, while I waited for him at the Estaminet of the Epi Scie, on the Boulevard du Temple, where we dined, and afterwards went to the Théâtre des Variétés. When I went into Chardon’s, I heard the clock of St. Nicholas’s Church strike one, and it was about a quarter after when we left the house. In fact, the crime was perpetrated in the middle of the day. On the following day, I hired a lodging in the Rue Montorgueil, in the name of Mahossier, a law student, where I lived six days with Avril.

“I did not become acquainted with François till the 30th of December. I hired the apartment solely for the purpose of robbing a collecting clerk, to accomplish which I should have stopped at nothing. I previously made several attempts of this nature, particularly one in the Rue de la Chanverrerie, which, however, failed on account of the clerk being followed by a porter. The first time we inveigled persons of this description was merely to ascertain how far enterprises of that nature were likely to succeed. François, on the 29th of December, went to the house of a young man with whom I was acquainted, and declared that he was in a desperate state, having no resources; that he was proscribed, that, if arrested, he would be condemned for life, having been before convicted, and that he would kill a man for 20 f. The young man hinted that he knew of a business worth more than that, which he would undertake himself, were he not ill, and offered to put François in his place. François accepted, and was on the following day brought to me by the young man, whom I will not name. François and I went together to the apartment in the Rue Montorgueil, on the door of which I had written the name of Mahossier.

“On Genevay’s entering, I requested him to go into the farther room, where I seized him by the shoulder while François put his hand on the man’s mouth, but as he shouted murder, François ran away, and I after him. François, believing that if I was taken he himself might escape, pulled the door after him, but I succeeded in opening it, and ran out, crying ‘Stop the murderer,’ and several persons passed who showed me the way François had taken. On the following day, François, myself, and the person who introduced us to each other, went to Issy, to rob a relation of François, but not being able to succeed returned to Paris, where I took a lodging in the house of Pageot, under the name of Baton, and François under that of Fusillier. We slept together. Pageot knew who and what we were. It was I and François who robbed Mr. Richmond, in the Boulevard Montmartre, of a clock, which I sold to a dealer in old clothes. A plan was laid between myself and Avril for robbing a collecting clerk of M. Rothschild, but as he never came to the appointment, we were obliged to content ourselves with robbing the room we had been lent for the purpose of a pair of curtains.”

It was then Avril’s turn, and he was brought into court to give his version. It consisted of an attack on Lacenaire, an attack in which François later on joined, the two ruffians, who had the best of reasons for knowing the treachery of their leader, reviling him until they had to be threatened by the president. At one period the trial resolved itself into a warfare of verbal abuse by three ruffians animated by a desire for what they called revenge, and there was nearly a riot as a consequence. Lacenaire, ever cool and collected, more than once assured the court that he did not wish to escape the death penalty and that all he wished was to see Avril and François condemned with him.

Like all great trials it had its amusing moments. Thus when Avril wished to call a witness of the name of Robetti, who was then undergoing imprisonment, the president remarked that a person condemned to infamous punishment could not be admitted to give testimony.

“Monsieur President,” exclaimed Avril indignantly, “Robetti is only condemned to three years, and no punishment under five years is infamous.”

On another occasion when the president was closely questioning Lacenaire concerning his numerous swindles the prisoner yawned several times. He resented these reminders of crimes which reduced him to the lowest level of petty villainy, for the philosopher who is a thief is not taken seriously, and Lacenaire wished to inspire terror and not derision, but he endured the unwelcome examination for half an hour before he was moved to protest.

“Monsieur,” he said, with a cynical smile, “you’re forgetting your sense of proportion. Your questions produce upon me the effect of a surgeon who amuses himself with trimming a man’s corns when he is about to cut off his leg.”

The trial also had its dull moments, but they were not the fault of Lacenaire, who proved himself a first-rate actor, for there can be little doubt that the show of contempt for death was merely a mask, and that the luminous eyes and smiling lips concealed a writhing soul. But he made almost every witness contribute to his desire for further publicity, extracting from one a tribute to his courage and from another a reference to his poems which served to double their circulation. He treated the dock as though it were a drawing-room, and his attitude towards the judge and jury was that of an old friend who could not quite hide a consciousness of social superiority. The abuse of Avril and François left him unmoved; he brushed them from him as though they were flies, and he succeeded in infecting the audience with a little of his own contempt for them. When called upon to speak in his own defence he was brief and to the point.

“Gentlemen,” he said, without any sign of emotion, “one of the advocates has told you that I desire to live. No, gentlemen, life has no attraction for me. I am no stoic. Give me money and fortune and the enjoyment of life, and I will accept them at your hand, but the life of the hulks would be insupportable. I ask no favour. Deal with me as you think fit.”

There were other speeches, but no one took any interest in them, for it was Lacenaire’s trial, and the fate of Avril and François, two obscure vulgarians, was so unimportant as to savour of an anti-climax. In the opinion of the majority of those present the verdict was a foregone conclusion, but there were some who thought that the frankness and courage of the criminal whom Paris had put on a pedestal might hypnotize the jury into saving his life by coupling “guilty” with “extenuating circumstances.”

The jury, however, were relentless, and only in the case of François did they find “extenuating circumstances.” Lacenaire bowed like a courtier, and Avril heightened the effect of his leader’s philosophical acceptance of his fate by an outburst which disgusted the crowded court.

“I hope they’ll give me time enough to finish my memoirs,” said Lacenaire, on his way back to the prison of the Conciergerie. “It is a document the world will prize.”

There were nearly seven weeks of life left to him, and until the night he was told by the governor that his execution had been fixed for the morrow he enjoyed every moment. The precious memoirs—the usual conglomeration of calculated lies rendered almost credible by their vividness—pleased him mightily, for he foresaw the time when his crimes might be forgotten and his literary work remembered. He would have been crazy with joy could he have been told that many of the greatest writers of his country, from Victor Hugo downwards, were to immortalize him in their books. As it was, he had to be content with the brief fame of the rapidly passing days and comfort himself with speculations as to the future.

Two nights before his execution Lacenaire composed a lengthy poem which took the form of a prisoner’s invocation to God. Judged by ordinary standards it may be described as conventional and uninspired, but in view of the circumstances surrounding it it may be said to possess unusual qualities. Many famous books have been written in prison, but not by those condemned to die, and the poets of our prisons have been, as a rule, comically illiterate. Lacenaire’s poem therefore deserves attention, and I will quote its last eight lines by way of a sample:

Dieu que j’invoque, écoute ma prière!

Darde en mon âme un rayon de ta foi,

Car je rougis de n’être que matière,

Et cependant je doute malgré moi—

Pardonne-moi, si dans ta créature

Mon œil superbe a méconnu ta main.

Dieu—le néant—notre âme—la nature,

C’est un secret;—je le saurai demain.

La Conciergerie, 8 Janvier, 1836.

It was his intention to deliver a lengthy harangue to the vast crowd he expected at his execution and also to recite his poem, but when he arrived in the tumbril the sparsity of the crowd revealed to him that the authorities had taken special precautions to discourage a large attendance. Paris had been kept in ignorance of the date of the execution of the popular criminal and so was represented at the end by a few hundred persons, chiefly gathered from the houses within sight of the guillotine. They formed a crowd which was not at all to the liking of the philosopher whose philosophy did not include toleration of those he regarded as the lower classes. Yet it was not contempt which at the last moment, when he came face to face with the guillotine, stifled the words on his lips, nor was it anger which sent the blood from his cheeks. He had mocked at death in his prison; he had scorned life in his poems; but there was the head of Avril in the basket, and no philosophy could keep at bay the terror inspired by those staring, lifeless eyes.

Once he tried to speak to one of the officials, but only half a dozen words were heard, and he was almost unconscious with terror when the knife put an end to a life of thirty-five years which had known little that was not evil since childhood.