o authentic
account appears before the public till the sentence is carried out.

The "Todesurtheil" appears, like our "Last Dying Speech," at the time of
the execution, but contains no verses; being a simple, and very brief
narrative of the life and crime of the condemned. He is designated by
his initials only, out of delicacy to his relatives, although his real
name is, somehow or other, already well known.

Six months later there occurred another execution, but I had no curiosity
to witness it. The condemned was a soldier, who, in a fit of jealousy,
had fired upon his mistress; but killed a bystander instead. There was
no mystery about the affair, and he was condemned to death.

On the day previous to his execution, he was allowed to receive the
visits of his friends and the public. Only a single person was admitted
at a time. He awaited his visitor (in this instance, an acquaintance of
my own), with calmness and resolution; advanced with outstretched hand to
meet him; greeting him with a hearty salutation. The visitor, totally
unprepared for this, trembled with a cold shudder, as he received the
pressure of the murderer's hand; murmured a blessing; dropped a few coin
into the box for the especial benefit of his soul, and hurriedly
withdrew.

On the following morning the condemned quitted his prison for the gibbet.
But the soldier, unlike the civilian--the soldier who has forfeited his
right to a military execution--must walk to his death. The civilian
rides in the felon's cart; the soldier, in undress, must pace the weary
way on foot. Imagine a death-condemned criminal walking from the Old
Bailey to Copenhagen Fields to the gallows, and you have a parallel case.

CHAPTER XX.

A JAIL EPISODE.

While in the full enjoyment of that luxury, "A Taste of Austrian Jails,"
already related in these pages, I met with a man whose whole life would
seem to signify perversion; a "dirty, villanous-looking fellow, with but
one eye, and very little light in that." A first glance at this fellow
would call up the reflection, "Here is the result of bad education, and
bad example, induced perhaps by natural misfortunes, but the inevitable
growth of filth and wretchedness in a large city."

With thin, straggling wisps of hair thrown, as it were, on his head, a
dull glimmer only in his one eye, and his whole features of a crafty,
selfish character--such he was; clad in a long, threadbare,
snuff-coloured great-coat,