offender, called on him to borrow a few sous;
the police were in search of him for a theft
lately committed.

"If I am caught," he said, "I shall be
sentenced for life. I don't know where to go to;
I would commit a murder for twenty francs!"

"Really?" said Bâton, pricking up his ears.
"I have had the offer of a job which is better
than that; but I am indisposed; I can't undertake
it. If you like, I will introduce you to
the party."

Accordingly, François was accepted. About
three in the afternoon the clerk, named Genevay,
presented himself at the lodging. He had
about him twelve hundred francs in silver, and
twelve thousand francs in bank-notes. He
knocked, was let in, and the door instantly
closed after him. As François tried to snatch
the money-bag, and Lacenaire struck him a
violent blow with a pointed instrument on
the left shoulder, Genevay began shouting
"Thieves! Murder!" with all his might, and,
after a struggle, got loose; at which, the robbers
made their escape down stairs into the street, as
if they had been the parties attacked instead of
the aggressors. François tried to gain time by
shutting the door upon Lacenaire, and so
causing him to be taken; but the latch went
with a string and was easily opened. Genevay
at first attempted to pursue them, but was soon
obliged to give it up; his wound, although
deep, did not turn out to be dangerous.

Alter this failure, Lacenaire amused himself
in a reading-room, till he joined François on
the Boulevard du Temple, where they dined.
To make up for their ill success, they stole
a clock from a shop in the Rue Richelieu.
Three days afterwards François, who had spent
his share of the proceeds, was taken up for a
piece of swindling committed some time
previously. Brigand No. 2 is caught, never to
recover liberty, in consequence of something
quite unconnected with the principal misdeed.

Lacenaire, after winning three hundred francs
at play, and having nothing particular to do in
town, thought fit, like other Parisian celebrities
in vacation time, to take a jaunt into the country
—a most imprudent move. There comes a
time in criminal biography, when the guilty
party hovers about the scaffold as the moth
circles round the flame of a candle. Lacenaire,
who had remained peaceably on the scene of his
crimes without being molested in any way—who
had squandered the price of blood in the most
frequented taverns of the Boulevards—Lacenaire,
the brigand No. 3, set off to be arrested, as we
commenced by stating, in a small provincial town,
as a vulgar cheat. He might well impatiently
say to the magistrate, who took much pains to
investigate these peccadilloes, " Really,
Monsieur, you put me in mind of a surgeon who
should carefully cut the corns on a patient's
foot before amputating the leg itself." On
another occasion he remarked, in reference to
his journey back to the capital, " I was very
glad to get to Paris; I always wished to die
there. I must confess that it would have
annoyed me very much to have to do with a country
executioner!"

The heads of the police tried hard to learn the
names of his accomplices. "We reprobates,"
he answered, "take a pride in never betraying
our associates, unless they first betray us or try
to injure us. That's our honesty."

"But had you not something to do with the
murder of the Chardons?" was abruptly asked.

"No," replied the prisoner laconically, without
displaying the slightest emotion.

"Well! We know that you committed it,
and the person who told us so is François."

"If what you say is true, you shall have
François bound hand and foot."

Convinced also that Avril (enraged at not
being concerned in the affair of the Rue
Montorgueil, which he believed had been of great
success) had really tried to get him arrested out
of revenge, he considered himself disengaged
from his former friend, and requested to be
confronted with both the traitors. The interval
was cruel for the culprits; they bowed the head
before Lacenaire, who treated them like
revolted slaves.

"You have betrayed me. Very well; both
your heads shall fall with mine. François was
my accomplice in the trap laid in the Rue
Montorgueil. As for Avril, he as well as I struck
Chardon in the Passage of the Cheval Rouge."

No one, hitherto, suspected the amount of
Avril's culpability. To complete his revenge,
Lacenaire added, that that crime was to have
been committed with the little fellow Bâton;
but that, on the way to the victim's lodging, his
companion's paleness made him defer the business
and take Avril as a more suitable agent.

A few weeks after Lacenaire's capture, the noise
of his exploits, his conversations, and especially
his verses, completely occupied the trumpet of
Fame. The Parisians were astonished at the
cynicism of his theories. The fools, "who constitute
the majority ever since the days of Adam,"
were surprised at the sight of a murderer
who spoke French correctly. Novel readers
declared that he resembled Lord Ruthven, the
Vampire. The blue-stockings were all excitement,
and admired the assassin who was in love
with a Sylphide—as Lacenaire styled his poetical
Egeria. Other women took great interest in a
criminal who published reveries, souvenirs,
lovesongs, and prayers, and they mourned over the
wolf who was moved to tears by the perusal of
pastoral poetry. But Lacenaire, instead of being
as ethereal as these charming creatures believed,
was the incarnation of materialism.

At the trial his appearance was youthful, fresh,
elegant, with a smiling and pleasant countenance,
relieved by a silky moustache. He regarded the
audience complacently. The gravity of his
position did not extinguish his literary mania;
he caused to be passed about the court a copy
of verses, in which he claimed the authorship of
a then popular ballad. His sole anxiety seemed
to consist in proving the guilt of Avril and
François. "Without either raising or lowering
his voice, he entered into the minutest details