have spared all trouble of reconsidering
the judgment, and have saved the convict
many years of indescribable torture. Lesnier
senior, who had to stand in the dock by the
side of his son, on the charge of complicity,
was acquitted by the same verdict which
condemned his son.

The son protested his innocence of the
murder— energetically, persistently, and
desperately— in vain. On the twenty-seventh
of January, eighteen hundred and forty-nine,
he was taken to the bagne, or convict depot,
of Rochefort. He was at once loaded with
double chains on account of the gravity of
the crimes for which he had been condemned
—no less than arson and murder; he was
made to wear the yellow coat, the badge of
the most atrocious and most dangerous
criminals. He spent two years and a-half thus,
and was then transferred to the bagne of
Brest, in consequence of the suppression of
that at Rochefort.

Subsequently he experienced a slight
amelioration of his lot, which he owed rather to
his educational acquirements than to his
continued protestations of innocence. He was
found useful in helping to keep the prison
accounts. Who believes the protested innocence
of persons convicted of, or even seriously
charged with, any grave offence? No one—
not even dearest friends and relatives. They
like the protest to be made, for form's sake,
because it gives them a pretext for hoping
against hope, for cheating their own affectionate
hearts— for screening, by the shadow
of a shade, the full blaze of certainty which
pours down its rays on the culprit's guilt;
but they do not believe it at the bottom of
their hearts. It is said that genuine innocence
pleads with such touching and persuasive
accents as to carry their own proof
with them, and to be irresistible. But history
proves the contrary. To avoid alluding to
any sad mistakes that have been made in
hanging innocent people in England, there is
a tradition that, many years since, a man was
executed at Calais for the murder of his own
brother. The alleged subject of dispute was
property, to be divided between himself, his
brother, and his father. He persisted in
declaring his innocence. On the scaffold, to
the very last moment, the priest kept shouting
in his ear,  " Confess! confess! "  His last
words, just before the axe fell, were, "I have
nothing to confess! I did not murder my
brother! "  No one believed him: but, after
a time, the father on his deathbed voluntarily
confessed that he had murdered one son, and
allowed the other to be beheaded unjustly.
Montbailly, accused of parricide, protested
against the charge with the utmost earnestness
possible; but he was broken on the
wheel and burnt alive, nevertheless. Even
on the scaffold, and pressed importunately by
the attendant minister, his reply was, " You
want me to say that I am guilty. I will consent
to do so, if you will take upon yourself,
before God, the responsibility of the lie
which you urge me to tell."  It is doubtful
whether anyone believed Lesnier to be
innocent, except his father, who had personal
knowledge of the falseness of Daignaud's
evidence, and, perhaps his counsel, M.
Gergeres, to whom he wrote some remarkable
letters.

Read only this: "Monsieur, I thank you
infinitely for the good advice you give me,
and will endeavour to derive from it the
strength necessary to bear the trials which
Providence has put upon me. I have had
my faults: I have yielded to all the errors of
youth, but I am not criminal, and I cannot
accept, as an expiation of those errors, the
punishment which is now inflicted on me. I
deplore the blindness of my judges, who have
been led into a fatal mistake by two depositions
which you cannot help remembering.
In my position I should be an ingrate if I
failed to conduct myself well. Monsieur the
Commissaire of the Marine has granted me a
great favour; he has employed me in writing:
I seem to find myself again in my usual
sphere. I am resigned, and await with
confidence the accomplishment of the designs of
Providence." In writing to Monsieur the
Proeureur Imperial at Brest, Lesnier stated
that  "the idea of his father was the only
thing that sustained him— without that idea,
he should have long ago contrived to destroy
himself." Let us not throw the first stone of
reproach at the projected, or rather supposed,
suicide till we ourselves have passed through
some similar ordeal. His working days in the
bureaux were bearable; his nights and his
Sundays, spent in the midst of convicts, are
represented as a succession of anguish and
torture. Lesnier was thus civilly dead,
and plunged in a terrestrial hell for seven
years.

The father, meanwhile at liberty, sought
for the means of justifying his son, if such
were to be found. Success at last attended
his efforts. Lespagne and his wife quarrelled;
she threw the secret, like a stone, at his head,
and it went further than she intended. Louis
Daignaud committed himself by imprudent
talk. He let out that, at the time of the
murder, he was indebted to Lespagne in the
sum of fifteen francs, and that, to avoid a
seizure for the same, he consented to state
that he met the two Lesniers that fatal night.
The woman Lespagne, tired of her passing
acquaintance (lust akin to hate), and desirous
of returning to her husband's house, had
screened him, Lespagne, the real murderer,
by fixing the charge on young Lesnier. An
inquiry took place, which resulted in sending
Lespagne, his wife, and Daignaud before the
Court of Assizes of La Gironde— Lespagne as
the perpetrator of the murder of Claude Gay,
and of the fire, and also as a suborner of false
witnesses, and the woman Lespagne and
Daignaud as guilty of false witness. The
trial excited, in the city of Bordeaux and its