the pencil. His countenance was dark,
marked, and melancholy; over it was spread the sallow tint of long
imprisonment. His beard was unshorn, and he displayed an indifference to
his fate, which not a little surprised me. He immediately retired, and
upon his return to his cell, a priest was sent for to prepare him for
his doom. At present, in the provinces, all criminal offences are tried
before military tribunals, qualified, as I have described this to be, by
a mixture of civil judges and bourgeois.

It is one of the peculiar characteristics of such tribunals, to order
immediate punishment after conviction. In the present instance, the fate
of the offender was well known, for his crimes were many, and manifest,
and as the interval allowed by military courts between the sentence, and
its fulfilment, is so very short, the administrators of the law had
postponed his trial for five months from the period of his commitment,
for the purpose of affording him an indulgent procrastination. This
mode, although arising from merciful motives, is, I am aware, open to
objection; but it would be unfair to comment upon laws, which prevailed
in times of revolution, and are permitted only to operate, until the
fine fabric of french criminal jurisprudence, which is now constructing,
shall be presented to the people. To the honour of our country, and one
of the greatest ornaments of the british bar, the honourable T. Erskine,
in the year 1789, furnished the french, with some of these great
principles of criminal law, which it was impossible to perfect during
the long aera of convulsion, and instability which followed, and which
will constitute a considerable part of that great, and humane code,
which is about to be bestowed upon the nation, and which will, no doubt,
prove to be one of the greatest blessings, which human wisdom can confer
upon human weakness.

Its foundation is nearly similar to that of our own. The great and
enlightened genius whose name I have mentioned, has provided that the
contumacy of _one_ juryman shall not be able to force the opinion of the
rest.

After the court had broken up, I visited the town house, which, before
the revolution, was the monastery of the benedictines, who, from what
appeared of the remains of their establishment, must have been
magnificently lodged, and well deserved during their existence, to bear
the name of the blessed. The two grand staircases are very fine, and
there is a noble garden b