his liberator
would appear. Andrea was short and fat; his visage, marked with brutal
cruelty, did not indicate age; he might be thirty. In prison he had
suffered his beard to grow; his head fell on his shoulder, his legs
bent beneath him, and his movements were apparently automatic and
unconscious.

* Dr. Guillotin got the idea of his famous machine from
witnessing an execution in Italy.

"I thought," said Franz to the count, "that you told me there would be
but one execution."

"I told you true," replied he coldly.

"And yet here are two culprits."

"Yes; but only one of these two is about to die; the other has many
years to live."

"If the pardon is to come, there is no time to lose."

"And see, here it is," said the count. At the moment when Peppino
reached the foot of the mandaia, a priest arrived in some haste,
forced his way through the soldiers, and, advancing to the chief of the
brotherhood, gave him a folded paper. The piercing eye of Peppino had
noticed all. The chief took the paper, unfolded it, and, raising his
hand, "Heaven be praised, and his holiness also," said he in a loud
voice; "here is a pardon for one of the prisoners!"

"A pardon!" cried the people with one voice--"a pardon!" At this cry
Andrea raised his head. "Pardon for whom?" cried he.

Peppino remained breathless. "A pardon for Peppino, called Rocca
Priori," said the principal friar. And he passed the paper to the
officer commanding the carbineers, who read and returned it to him.

"For Peppino!" cried Andrea, who seemed roused from the torpor in
which he had been plunged. "Why for him and not for me? We ought to die
together. I was promised he should die with me. You have no right to put
me to death alone. I will not die alone--I will not!" And he broke
from the priests struggling and raving like a wild beast, and striving
desperately to break the cords that bound his hands. The executioner
made a sign, and his two assistants leaped from the scaffold and seized
him. "What is going on?" asked Franz of the count; for, as all the talk
was in the Roman dialect, he had not perfectly understood it. "Do you
not see?" returned the count, "that this human creature who is about to
die is furious that his fellow-sufferer does not perish with him? and,
were he able, he would rather tear him to pieces with his teeth and
nails than let him enjoy the life he himself is about to be deprived
of. Oh, man, man--race of crocodiles," cried