the woman, but refused them to the man.
After a trial lasting four days Eyraud was sentenced to death, Bompard
to twenty years penal servitude.

At first Eyraud appeared to accept his fate with resignation. He wrote
to his daughter that he was tired of life, and that his death was the
best thing that could happen for her mother and herself. But, as time
went on and the efforts of his advocate to obtain a commutation of his
sentence held out some hope of reprieve, Eyraud became more reluctant to
quit the world.

"There are grounds for a successful appeal," he wrote, "I am pretty
certain that my sentence will be commuted.... You ask me what I do?
Nothing much. I can't write; the pens are so bad. I read part of the
time, smoke pipes, and sleep a great deal. Sometimes I play cards, and
talk a little. I have a room as large as yours at Sevres. I walk up and
down it, thinking of you all."

But his hopes were to be disappointed. The Court of Cassation rejected
his appeal. A petition was addressed to President Carnot, but, with a
firmness that has not characterised some of his successors in office, he
refused to commute the sentence.

On the morning of February 3, 1891, Eyraud noticed that the warders, who
usually went off duty at six o'clock, remained at their posts. An hour
later the Governor of the Roquette prison entered his cell, and informed
him that the time had come for the execution of the sentence. Eyraud
received the intelligence quietly. The only excitement he betrayed was a
sudden outburst of violent animosity against M. Constans, then Minister
of the Interior. Eyraud had been a Boulangist, and so may have nourished
some resentment against the Minister who, by his adroitness, had helped
to bring about the General's ruin. Whatever his precise motive, he
suddenly exclaimed that M. Constans was his murderer: "It's he who is
having me guillotined; he's got what he wanted; I suppose now he'll
decorate Gabrielle!" He died with the name of the hated Minister on his
lips.

End of Project Gutenberg's A Book of Remarkable Criminals, by H. B. Irving

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A BOOK OF REMARKABLE CRIMINALS ***

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