the commandant, M. Chanzy, who, on the
eighteenth of October, finding Doineau at the
café, told him what had been going on.
Doineau treated it all as a joke.

"No, the thing is very serious," observed
Chanzy, gravely: "I am ordered to arrest
you. Of course, being innocent, you have
nothing to fear." They walked together to
the captain of gendarmerie, and Doineau was
taken to prison.

Doineau's superiors although cognisant of,
and indeed implicated in, many of his official
excesses—could hardly have suspected him
of plotting the conspiracy which had ended
in the murder of the Agah; for here is a
copy of the recommendation for Doineau's
promotion, which he had forwarded to
headquarters, and which he had given him to read.
It is one of the curiosities of this extraordinary affair;

"Theoretical instruction: very good.
"Practical instruction: good.
"He knows land-surveying.
"He speaks Arabic well and with great facility, and
reads and writes it.
"He speaks a little German.
"He has occupied himself much with the study of
this country, which he knows perfectly.
"Very apt for all the functions, active or sedentary,
which he fulfils in an equally remarkable manner.
"The most distinguished head of an office and fit
for anything.
"Very zealous in the service, and very assiduous in
study.
"He has directed with brilliant success a great
number of operations at the head of tribe-guards or
goums, and has commanded camps in which there were
regular troops. Quite recently he has directed a razzia
(a levy of black mail), with equal vigour, intelligence,
and prudence, upon the frontier, at the head of a
numerous goum and regular horsemen. All employments
may be confided to him, the most difficult and
the most delicate.
"He has military habits and the taste for the
profession of arms: made to rise. An officer of promise.
Merits promotion in every way.
"Is a good horseman, well adapted to command a
district, or for any command corresponding with his
position; has the intention to remain in Arabian
business.
"On very good terms with the natives; being at
once loved, feared, and respected.
"Very good connections
"Strong head, warm heart, developed intelligence.
"Energetic and resolute character.
"Physique: very good, very tall, good health and
constitution; fine military air, with perfect conduct
and morals.
"26 January 1857. The General Commanding
the Sub-division,
"BEAUFORT."

Doineau's arrest had been occasioned by
the confessions of his secretary and the black
servant. Kaddom Bow Medine—who had
fled with his master, Bel Hadj—on being
seized at a place not far from Tlemcen,
implicated his master, and eventually all the
murderers to the number of nineteen, were
secured.

The trial took place at Oran. The temporary
court-house could only be approached
by tortuous steps cut out of the rocks.
The inhabitants of the city saw daily the
procession of the nineteen prisoners walking
slowly from their prison to the old house in
which the court sat. They looked, as they
descended the steep paths of the mountain,
like a procession of penitents in white. The
Arabs were chained together in pairs. Bel
Hadj became so weak at last that he
had to be carried, and Bel Khier was
worn to a shadow. Doineau, who was
dressed in the costume of a captain of
Zouaves, maintained for many days his
lofty looks and disdainful airs; but he
could not command upon several occasions
the nervous twitchings of the mouth,
characteristic of persons trying to conceal violent
emotion.

A place was reserved in the court for the
widow of Abdallah. The Arabs—the best
educated of whom had only a slight knowledge
of French—seemed engaged in prayer during
the reading of the indictment. The heat in
the court during the trial, which lasted from
the sixth to the twenty-third of August, was
excessive. The Arabs fanned themselves
with the hems of their burnouses, and all the
judges used fans in the form of little platted
flags. I find it noticed in the reports of the
trial, as an augur of strange omen, that, upon
the last day, and when the audience had
assembled to hear the sentences, and had
been waiting in religious silence for some
time, a swallow flew in at the window and
round and round near the roof.

The confession of Kaddom Bou Medine
stated, in effect, that he had arrived in
Tlemcen on the day before the murder to
buy various things for a marriage, when, on
passing before the café of Bel Kheir, he was
called in, and found in it Bel Hadj, Agah of
the Ghossels, and the Caid Bel Kheir with
the Bou Nona and Boukra the brigadier.
They told him that the captain had
commanded them to take an oath upon the koran.
Bel Hadj was the first to take the oath.
Afterwards, he was walking before the café
at three o'clock in the morning, when the
captain arrived with his cavalcade of Arabs.
They followed the diligence, leaving the
town through the same gate. It was the
captain who commanded the attack, and his
secretary, Ahmed, who fired the first shot.
The sphahis brigadier Bourka followed him
by firing his musket.

But it was the confessions of his secretary,
or kodja, Sidi Ahmed, which were most
convincing of Doineau's guilt. When he met
the captain, by appointment, at three o'clock
in the morning, Doineau was
accompanied by Bel Hadj, Bel Kheir, a sphahis,
and a horseman whom Ahmed could not
recognise. They followed the diligence. It was
the captain who ordered them, when they
reached the olive wood, to take their positions,