the National Guard when they came to put out
the fires. Morey said that hni the government
was once free, the world would be nappy, and
the nation rich. Small fortunes were to be left
alone; but when a man had a million, all beyond
three hundred thousand francs were to be
thrown into the national funds. Pepin clapped
him on the back, and said, " Mon brave,
you shall be recompensed." But Fieschi
replied, the government was not to be shut up
in a snuff-box. There would be civil wars,
and all he wished was to win glory at the
head of one hundred or two hundred men and
chase the stranger from the Rhine, and drive
off the Cossacks, who were jealous of France.
Pepin then declared that the heads of all
supporters of monarchy must roll along the streets
like paving-stones.

On the 15th of February, the seventeenth
audience, the court brought a verdict of guilty
against all the prisoners but Bescher, who was
acquitted; Fieschi, Morey, and Pepin were
condemned to death; Boireau to twenty years'
detention, and to be for the rest of his life
under the surveillance of the police. Morey
heard his sentence with calm indifference,
Pepin with assurances of his innocence, Fieschi
with vain and verbose assurances of repentance.

He had become a lion of the day, and
keenly relished the popularity he had acquired
so dearly. Even the peers applauded some of
his sallies. With distorted face and sardonic
smile he watched eagerly for his moments of
recrimination or self-assertion.

The antecedents of Fieschi were soon
unravelled. He was a Corsican of Genoese
extraction, born at Murato in 1790. His father, a
condemned criminal, had died in voluntary
exile. One of the assassin's brothers fell at
Wagram; his only sister was blind. A second
brother, born dumb, was so heart-broken with
grief at the news of Fieschi's crime that he
remained two whole days without taking food.

Giuseppe Fieschi was originally a goatherd,
but, being quick and adventurous, soon left
Corsica, enlisted in a regiment of light
infantry at Naples, and, displaying much, zeal
and courage, became regimental staff-sergeant
by the time he was nineteen. Entering Murat's
Guards, he distinguished himself by great
courage in the campaigns of 1812 and 1814, and
won the decoration of the Two Sicilies. In
1815, Fieschi deserted to the Austrians,
and his information, it is said, contributed to
his old master's defeat at Tolentino. When
Murat was at Vescovato, Fieschi rejoined him,
and was sent on important secret service to
Naples. His reports encouraged Murat to his
rash and fatal expedition. On landing at
Pizzo, Fieschi requested leave to go first and
reconnoitre, and a very short time after Murat
was shot down by the gendarmes of
Monteleone.

Traitor or not, the man did not thrive. He
returned to Corsica a beggar, to wrangle with
his brother-in-law for a share of the fraternal
heritage. Unable to obtain even a sou, Fieschi
took the law into his own hands, and, like a
true Corsican moss-trooper, drove off a cow
belonging to his brother and sold it openly in
the market-place. Brought before a magistrate,
he produced forged papers to prove his
right, and was in consequence arrested and sent
to Bastia. Here he escaped to the mountains
by leaping from a window twenty feet
from the ground.

In 1816, when only twenty-six years old,
Fieschi was condemned to ten years' imprisonment
at Embrun, and to police supervision for
life. At Embrun he learnt the trade of a
cloth-maker; and when he was released, breaking
the ban, he went to Lodève, and practised
his trade. From there he went to the royal
manufactory at Villelouvette, conducting
himself there well, and with a pretence of religion.
Coming to Paris, he obtained help from his old
commander, and became porter at a newspaper
office, and a spy of the police.

He lived at this period with his mistress,
Laurence Petit, who kept a students' table-
d'hôte; but he finally seduced her daughter,
Nina Lassave, then quite a child, and led a life
so dissolute and so disgraceful that the police
dismissed him. It was at this time that he
sought help of Morey, and described himself
as wretched as the dog that looks for food at a
street corner. Most men, he afterwards said,
in such misery, must have gone mad or thrown
themselves out of window. It was in this
poverty and despair that men like Morey took
advantage of his cunning, recklessness, and
inordinate vanity. The government observing
that a sort of boastful gratitude was a leading
point in his character, persuaded him to
disclose the plot to his old benefactor, M.
Ladvocat.

The king, in acknowledgment, forgave Fieschi
the parricide's penalty of wearing a black veil on
the scaffold, and walking to the guillotine with
bare feet. While he was undergoing the toilettte,
he merely said:

"Is it not heart-breaking that I should be
the first executed for political causes since 1830?
I would have rather remained on the field at
Beresina."

Pepin was cruelly bound in the camisole. While
his hair was being cut off, he said to Fieschi,

"I am your victim."

Fieschi was going to reply, but his confessor
stopped him. Fieschi then threw himself at
Pepin's feet and begged him to tell the whole
as truth, he had done, that he might appear
before God without fear.

Pepin heaved a sigh and replied, " No, I can
say nothing. I will not compromise fathers of
families."

As for Morey he was so weak that he had to
be lifted on to the scaffold; but he said calmly,

"It is not courage I want, but legs."

The scaffold had only been erected at a quarter
before seven; at a quarter past eight the
execution took place in the Place de Jacques,
before a vast crowd that filled every avenue. Pepin
was calm and resigned, and declared his
innocence to the last. " Since I must die, I will die.
I have nothing more to say," he replied to the