Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/876

794, Né sous une mauvaise étoile (Born under an evil star).

Malassen, a ferocious assassin, who became in New Caledonia an executioner of convicts (Meyer, Souvenirs d'un Déporté), was covered from his feet to his head with grotesque and frightful tattoo marks. On his breast he had drawn a red and black guillotine, with the words in red letters: ''J'ai mat commencé, je finirai mat. C'est la fin qui m'attend'' (I have begun evil, I shall end evil. That is the end that awaits me). His right arm, which had inflicted death upon so many human beings, bore the terrible device, very appropriate to his hand, Mort à la chiourme (Death to the convict).

The famous Neapolitan camorrist Salsano had himself represented in an attitude of bravado. He held a stick in his hand, and was defying a police guard. Under the figure was his sobriquet, Éventre tout le monde (disembowel everybody); then came two hearts and keys connected with chains, in allusion to the secrecy of the camorrists.

We see, then, by these few examples, that there is a kind of hieroglyphic writing among criminals, that is not regulated or fixed, but is determined from daily events, and from argot, very much as would take place among primitive men. Very often, in fact, the key in the designs signifies the silence of secrecy, and the death's head vengeance. Sometimes the figures are replaced by points, as when a judicial arrest is marked on the arm with seventeen points, which means, according to the criminal, that he intends to Strike his enemy that number of times when he falls into his hands.

Another characteristic of criminals, which is also common to them with sailors and savages, is to trace the designs not only on the arms and the breast (the most frequent usage), but on nearly all the parts of the body. I have remarked one hundred tatooed on the arms, breast, and abdomen, five on the hands, three on the fingers, and three on the thigh.

A certain T, thirty-four years of age, who had passed many years in prison, had not, except on his cheeks and loins, a surface the size of a crown that was not tattooed. On his forehead could be read Martyr de la Liberté (Martyr of Liberty); the words being surmounted by a snake eleven centimetres long. On his nose he had a cross, which he had tried to efface with acetic acid.

A Venetian thief, who had served in the Austrian army, had on his right arm a double-headed eagle, and near it the names of his mother and his mistress Louise, with the strange epigraph for a thief:Louise, chère amante, mon unique consolation (Louise, dear loved one, my only consolation). Another thief wore on his right arm a bird holding a heart, stars, and an anchor. On the