punishment passes by. When he falls into the hands of human justice
his reputation protects him, and for a few days more the legal sword is
turned aside. Hypocrisy is so completely a part of his nature, that even
when there is no longer any hope, when he is irrevocably sentenced, and
he knows that he can no longer deceive anyone, neither mankind nor
Him whose name he profanes by this last sacrilege, he yet exclaims, "O
Christ! I shall suffer even as Thou." It is only by the light of his
funeral pyre that the dark places of his life can be examined, that this
bloody plot is unravelled, and that other victims, forgotten and lost in
the shadows, arise like spectres at the foot of the scaffold, and escort
the assassin to his doom.

Let us trace rapidly the history of Derues' early years, effaced and
forgotten in the notoriety of his death. These few pages are not written
for the glorification of crime, and if in our own days, as a result
of the corruption of our manners, and of a deplorable confusion of all
notions of right and wrong, it has been sought to make him an object;
of public interest, we, on our part, only wish to bring him into notice,
and place him momentarily on a pedestal, in order to cast him still
lower, that his fall may be yet greater. What has been permitted by God
may be related by man. Decaying and satiated communities need not
be treated as children; they require neither diplomatic handling nor
precaution, and it may be good that they should see and touch the
putrescent sores which canker them. Why fear to mention that which
everyone knows? Why dread to sound the abyss which can be measured by
everyone? Why fear to bring into the light of day unmasked wickedness,
even though it confronts the public gaze unblushingly? Extreme turpitude
and extreme excellence are both in the schemes of Providence; and the
poet has summed up eternal morality for all ages and nations in this
sublime exclamation--

"Abstulit hunc tandem Rufini poem tumultum."

Besides, and we cannot insist too earnestly that our intention must not
be mistaken, if we had wished to inspire any other sentiment than that
of horror, we should have chosen a more imposing personage from the
annals of crime. There have been deeds which required audacity, a sort
of grandeur, a false heroism; there have been criminals who held in
check all the regular and legitimate forces of society, and whom one
regarded with a mixture of terror and