our legislation in criminal matters do not authorise
your demand for revision." Two years after,
MM. Caille and Daubanton, addressing the
Emperor, Napoleon the First, answered this
decision by the argument, that, "The rehabilitation
of an innocent man, condemned and
executed, is a public right. If a law does not
exist which regulates the modes by which
this is obtained, such a law ought to be
made." Napoleon was struck by these words;
and ordered a report of the whole matter to be
laid before him. Then it seemed for a
moment as if the strange fate pursuing the family
would be baffled. But, unfortunately, he
appointed the Imperial Procureur, M. Giraudet, to
draw up the report; and M. Giraudet, who had
been the chief attorney in the trials of Vidal,
Dubosc, and Rossi, had his forensic reputation
also to protect; M. Giraudet denying that he
had ever made a mistake in identity, counselled
the "rejection of the demand for revision."

Again, in 1809, the Emperor ordered a new
report from the then young and unknown magistrate
M. de Belleyme; with what legal conclusions
no one knows; but that Lesurques's
innocence was held to be clearly established even
then is proved by the fact that no honourable
man, or body of men, would accept his confiscated
lands; for the Legion of Honour refused
them; so did the Senate; so did M. le Comte
de Jacqueminot—whose answer was very
noteworthy. He was offered these lands as a
senatorial dotation, but he replied in his place: "I
respect misfortune too much to receive property
stained with innocent blood, and which ought
to be restored to the family of the victim." In
stead of this, it was confiscated to the Treasury,
"which never piques itself on sensibility," says
Henry d'Audigier, sarcastically.

The following year (1811), the eldest daughter
of Lesurques, and her young brother, aged
eighteen, went to the Tuileries to present a
petition to the Emperor, then busied in reviewing
his troops. "Good! my children. Return again
in three days and I will answer you," said
Napoleon, kindly. The young creatures left
full of hope; and again the pale struggling star
seemed as if it was about to break forth from
the clouds; but when next they saw the
Emperor, his mind had changed; he had seen into
the matter, he said, and did not find their
complaint just—he could not grant what they
demanded. There was no help for it. The young
girl simply expressed her belief that later his
imperial majesty would see his mistake; the
boy took service in his army, and perished, as
has been said, in Russia. So time went on, until
the abdication was signed at Fontainebleau;
when, with a new government, came new hopes
and new endeavours. M. Dambray, minister to
Louis the Eighteenth, transferred the request
of the family for a copy of the process to M.
Legoux, procureur or attorney-general, who in
his turn relegated it to the public attorney at
Versailles. That attorney was M. Giraudet; and
his answer was, "that the co-operation of
Lesurques in the assassination of the Courier of
Lyons was of the clearest evidence." So M.
Legoux replied to M. Dambray "that there were
too many objections to giving up the
documents;" and all was said. When Louis the
Eighteenth came back, after the fateful Hundred
Days, the Duc de Berry, passing through Douai,
received the magnates of the city in the old way
of loyalty and supplication; and the magnates of
Douai, among other things, prayed his royal
highness to obtain the restoration to the widow
and her orphans of the old family house of the
Lesurques's, which no one would buy or inhabit.
This little bit of kindness the duke faithfully
performed: and behold, in 1817, just twenty-
one years after the official murder of the poor
"fair man," the first small stone rolled away
from the tomb of his good name.

In 1821, M. de Salgues for the first time got
hold of, and published, all the papers, reports,
evidence, letters, &c., connected with this
strange affair, referring to M. Siméon, as we
have seen, and getting in reply the assertion of
Lesurques's innocence, backed by the secret
order to the police to seize his publication,
and even arrest his person if he became too
troublesome. The daughter, Melanie,
afterwards Madame Danjou, whose name often
occurs in these wearisome proceedings, thought
that perhaps she might soften their old enemy
by a personal interview. She presented
herself at his house, was received, and announced;
but M. Siméon, who was standing leaning
against the chimney-piece when the door was
opened, made an insolent gesture of impatience
and disrespect, and abruptly turning his back
left the room as soon as her name was
pronounced. Shall we do him justice if we say
that his conscience troubled him? or was it that
his heart was hardened, like a certain Pharaoh
of old time, and "he would not let the children
of Israel go?" In this same year the king's
attorney, M. Doué d'Arc, reporting on the
Lesurques affair, expressed "his sorrowful
conviction that Lesurques had died the victim
of a fatal error; and on the 14th of December,
still in this same year of 1821, M. le
Comte de Valence declared in the senate "that
the verdict of the Year Four was sullied with
a fatal error, and that the innocence of the
condemned, acknowledged and proclaimed by
the grand jury of public opinion, demanded the
revision of the sentence, and official rehabilitation."
The next day, M. le Comte de Floirac
said, in the Chamber of Deputies, that "never
had the innocence of an accused been better
proved;" and he moved for the "solemn
reparation" due to the memory of Lesurques. The
Due de Berry was to have carried a petition to
the king to this effect, when that fatal folly of
the fanatic Louvel once more threw the whole
matter into doubt and delay. In 1822, M. de
Salgues published his famous Memoir, addressed
to the king; and in 1823, M. LOUIS MÉ-QUILLET
took up the cause, and consecrated his life to the
task of obtaining recognition, justice, and
restitution for the name and family of Lesurques.

For forty years this brave, humane, and