and imposed upon him a fine of ten pounds.
Ben Bekka may have had the same fate.
If Boukra, a police agent, took a large quantity
of barley from a man of the Ghossels
Boudmin tribe, it must have been found in
concealed pits. On one occasion Doineau
forcibly seized and sold sixty of the Agah
Abdallah's camels, and it was abundantly
proved that he had kept the proceeds of
these seizures, and spent them in a manner
which caused his accusers to compare him to
a young satrap. "He is our sultan." The
kodja declared that he had often been
employed by Captain Doineau to take prisoners
out of prison; and, after leading them to a lonely
spot, put them to death. The kodja, when
examined as a king's evidence, gave details
respecting the execution of one Mouffock.
This man wished to move his tent from one
place to another, and he was arrested by the
sphahis of the Arabian Office. That individual
ought to have been sent before the
proper authorities, but the prisoner ordered
him to be executed; "and I," added the
secretary, "myself presided over his execution.
His head was cut off."

When asked, "Did you not understand
that those savage executions were frightful
things, forbidden even to the Sultan?" the
kodja replied, with animation, "The captain
was my sultan; I was forced to obey him.
Besides, in a single day he had ordered three
executions; and then, as I saw that the
superior authority said nothing, I thought
that he had an uncontested power to do
anything." This was manifestly the general
opinion of the unhappy Arabs in Doineau's
district. Indeed, all his summary executions
explain their surprising subservience.
Doineau killed Arabs with a levity which would
be inconceivable and incredible if the cases
had not been admitted with an astonishing
indifference, or proved beyond contradiction.
A French soldier having been attacked
and stabbed by two natives, who were
afterwards caught by a chief, the natives were
shot by Boukra, the black, and the chief was
fined eighty pounds for not catching them
sooner.

Auguste Doineau showed remarkable acuteness
and cunning in defending himself. He
had always managed to get, throughout his
trial, the last word against his accusers and
his judge. The son of an officer who had
been a reporter for the Military Tribunals,
he combined the subtle fluency of an advocate
with the audacity of a great criminal. He
struck the key-note of his defence when he
exclaimed, "Do I look like a cut-throat?"
His safety lay, he thought, in the
improbability of his crimes, and the unwillingness
of the French authorities to convict a
French officer and official of being guilty of
performing his civil and military duties at
once like a false clerk and a highwayman, a
pettifogger and a brigand.

Doineau, Bel Hadj, and the other prisoners,
displayed far more public repugnance for
Mamar, the jackal, than for the atrocities
imputed to them; but the jackal, the filthy
and ragged cut-throat, in his tattered blanket,
had been the trusted, secret, and active,
although disavowed instrument, agent, spy,
and bravo. He retorted their disdain by
declaring their conduct worse than his; being
without the excuses of his poverty and
ignorance. The secretary of Doineau, Ahmed,
was, as a witness, more than a match for his
master in cunning. His flattery, clearness,
and shrewdness, had a great share in
Doineau's condemnation. Salaam is an Arabian
word; and he never addressed the court
without making many salaams, and uttering
many complimentary palavers, such as, "My
lord, the president,—thou who art a man of
head, a man of science, a man of wisdom—
thou who knowest all things, thou wilt not
fail to unravel the truth. May God aid you,
and may God bless you."

The Chief, Bel Hadj, was decorated with
the cross of the Legion of Honour when in
Paris, at the Exhibition of eighteen hundred
and fifty-five. His character is a compound
of avarice and cowardice, concealed beneath
ostentation and jealousy, burnouses and
decorations. During his trial he was always
either in a state of stupor or a delirium
of fear; from which he only awoke
to inquire what had been done with his
money?

When Doineau was asked if he had
anything to say why the law ought not to be
applied to him, he answered:

"Nothing."

Seven prisoners were acquitted; all the
others were pronounced guilty. Pecuniary
compensation was adjudged to the three
widows of the murdered men—fifteen
thousand francs to the widow of Hamadi; fifty
thousand to Madame Valette; and to the rich
widow of Abdallah the nominal sum she had
asked, of a hundred francs. The subordinate
actors in the murders received the penalty of
five years' imprisonment. Mamar, Bel Hadj,
and others, who were convicted of having
taken an active part in the murders, were
sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment
with hard labour. The kodja was condemned
to imprisonment with hard labour for life.
Auguste Doineau was condemned to death,
the execution to take place in the public
square at Oran. After receiving their
sentences, Bel Hadj and Doineau were expelled
from the Legion of Honour, although they
were not stripped of their decorations.

The President said: "Doineau the
condemned—you have been deficient in honour,
and have therefore fallen from the dignity of
a member of the Legion of Honour."

Every criminal has his admirers, if he be
only brazen and fearless. When Doineau
left the court a person from the crowd threw
himself into his arms. As the procession of
the malefactors was returning to prison,