onvert them into one of those criminal
couples who are the more dangerous for the fact that the temptation
to crime has come to each spontaneously and grown and been fostered by
mutual understanding, an elective affinity for evil. Such couples are
frequent in the history of crime. Eyraud and Bompard, Mr. and Mrs.
Manning, Burke and Hare, the Peltzer brothers, Barre and Lebiez, are
instances of those collaborations in crime which find their counterpart
in history, literature, drama and business. Antoninus and Aurelius,
Ferdinand and Isabella, the De Goncourt brothers, Besant and Rice,
Gilbert and Sullivan, Swan and Edgar leap to the memory.

(3) "Le Crime a Deux," by Scipio Sighele (translated from the Italian),
Lyons, 1893.

In the cases of Eyraud and Bompard, both man and woman are idle, vicious
criminals by instinct. They come together, lead an abandoned life,
sinking lower and lower in moral degradation. In the hour of need, crime
presents itself as a simple expedient for which neither of them has any
natural aversion. The repugnance to evil, if they ever felt it, has
long since disappeared from their natures. The man is serious, the woman
frivolous, but the criminal tendency in both cases is the same; each
performs his or her part in the crime with characteristic aptitude.
Mrs. Manning was a creature of much firmer character than her husband,
a woman of strong passions, a redoubtable murderess. Without her
dominating force Manning might never have committed murder. But he was a
criminal before the crime, more than suspected as a railway official of
complicity in a considerable train robbery; in his case the suggestion
of murder involved only the taking of a step farther in a criminal
career. Manning suffered from nerves almost as badly as Macbeth; after
the deed he sought to drown the prickings of terror and remorse by heavy
drinking Mrs. Manning was never troubled with any feelings of this kind;
after the murder of O'Connor the gratification of her sexual passion
seemed uppermost in her mind; and she met the consequences of her crime
fearlessly. Burke and Hare were a couple of ruffians, tempted by what
must have seemed almost fabulous wealth to men of their wretched
poverty to commit a series of cruel murders. Hare, with his queer,
Mephistophelian countenance, was the wickeder of the two. Burke became
haunted as time went on and flew to drink to banish horror, but Hare
would seem to have been free from such