Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 01.pdf/346

Rh ing road bordered on each side by high hills. When one has gone a hundred or a hundred and fifty metres, there is upon the left a dense wood of considerable extent. Behind this wood, thirty or forty metres from the road, there is a little stream which runs to the highway which it crosses.

After leaving the carriage at Quatre-Pavillons, Éliçabide made Marie and her daughter follow him along the highway until they came to the road of which we have spoken. There he told them they must take this road to reach his sister's house, and under a dark and rainy sky they followed him.

We will now let the murderer relate his new crimes.

"We walked some minutes before arriving at the branching off of the road we were to take. My knees trembled, I could not breathe, my brain was in confusion. I felt I should give way under the violence of my emotions. When we reached the place I had chosen for the sacrifice, I stopped I began to be afraid I advanced toward Marie, armed with the hammer; I struck her I saw her fall! At the moment the iron dropped from my hands, the cry of the child recalled me to myself. I struck again. I know not what I did. Then the silence of death reigned around me.

"Dazed and bewildered, I withdrew some steps from my victims. Terrors, such as men could never inspire, seized me. It seemed as if all Nature proclaimed aloud my crimes. For the first time in my life I feared God

"I have only a confused recollection of what followed. I only know that day began to break, and I hastened to Bordeaux. Arriving at the inn I asked gayly for breakfast. I think I ate heartily. I joked with the host and the servant. I asked for a fire to dry my clothes. I went to sleep before the fire. I asked for a bed. There I passed twenty-four hours in a half-unconscious state.

"The next day I felt only a nervous agitation which betrayed itself in the trembling of my limbs. Then I was arrested. I asked for a pen, and I have written this confession which my tongue would have refused to utter.

"I ask no mercy; my death is well-merited. Would that I could save my poor father and my poor mother from the agony my horrible acts will cause them!"

After his arrest Éliçabide recovered all his sang-froid. It was feared that he would attempt to commit suicide, and a constant watch was kept over him. He noticed this, and said to his guards: "It is unnecessary; my life no longer belongs to me."

The 9th of September the trial of Éliçabide began. The defence was insanity.

When asked his motive for his crimes, he said he was actuated by pure philanthropy; that, having suffered so much himself, he wished to spare those he loved the same misery.

He was skilfully defended by M. Gorgeres, but the jury found a verdict of guilty without extenuating circumstances.

The 5th of November the condemned expiated his crimes in the Place d'Aquitaine at Bordeaux. His vanity did not desert him in his last moments. He seemed to be impressed only with the desire to die well. His pride found a miserable satisfaction in the great excitement his execution caused.

His confessor spoke to him of the sufferings of Christ. "Christ was good," said he, "and they reviled him. I am wicked, yet they do not revile me." And looking upon the sea of heads which surrounded him, "Are not all these men there more wicked than I?"

"Think of religion," said his confessor.

"In a few moments," replied Éliçabide, "I shall not think of anything."

These were his last words.