A French Execution

For some dayspast Versauleshas been more excited over the approaching execution of a boy of 19 tban it has been over the Parliamentary battle raging between the Republicana and the MacMahonians. It is some months since three young men, whose united ages did not amount to 60 years, murdered the widow Tartarin, at Argenteuil, one Deon Stabbing her at the counsel of a seeond, Lamoureaux, who watched for a favorable opportunity to commit the crime, and helped to throw the body into a cellar, while the third, Roux, throttled the old woman and knelt on her chest til! she died. All three were found drinking and playing cards by the eide of the corpse. Lamoreaux, the youngest of the three, was the only one in whose case the jury declined to find circonstances extenuantes, so that he carne to the scaffold, which the others escaped with lile imprisoninent at hard labor. At rnidnight a sqüad of forty gendarmes, half of them mounted, eet out for the place of execution, the Pont-Colbert. This is a singularly cliarming spot, where a wide avenue turning through a belt of woods forma for a little distance a largo square, covered with moss and turf and arched over with lofty trees, tufted thickets at a little distance shutting out the view on all sides. The whole scène, with the grass sparkling with dew, the treetops swaying in the light breeze, the clouds paling with the approach of dawn remindod one irfesistibïy of a bit of some quiet picture or a scène set for the stage. Here the instrument of death was set up, all being in readiness at 2 :30, when, to assure himself that all was in working order, Eoch tried the fall of the kniie and the slide of the plank, and spread a deep layer of bran in the basket toward which the latter ruus. At 3 the guard of 200 soldiers arrived. A little later the sky of a calm, breathless summer morning began to lighten, and the twitter of awakening birds was heard. The ax was run up to tlio height of the uprights and loft suspended. Just as the first glint of the light came over the horizon and glittered on the elevated blade, Roeh placed a small stool in his van, stepped in with an assistunt, and drove away for his victim to the jail, distant about a mile and a quarter. Valentín Roux had been awakened and !iad heard mass beforo the executioner arrived and the usual formalities were gone through witli. He was lodged in ;he van which, with an escort of gend'armes, set out at once for the Pont3olbert. A crowd of 2,000 people was n waiting at the gate, and the moment it was opened the amateurs of executions rushed through and scampered along the road in advance of the lumbering velicle. At 3:55 it entered the sqware 'ormed by the troops and the gend'armes, who had their bayonets fixed and sabers drawn. A step-ladder was jiiced against ihe door, from which Roch and his head assistant (who was his son in-law) escorted Roux. The prisoner was a beardless joy of 19, small, slight, naked to the waist, of a dirty sallow hue with fear. The chaplain walked backwards closely jefore him to simt out the sight of the. guillotine. At the foot of the stairs the jriest kissed hiln on either cheek, jressed the crucifix to hi lips, laid ïands on the boy's head and nmttered a vord of absolution, then slipped aside and feil on lus knees. Whether the struggled, or shrank back, or essayed to speak, no one could say, f or almost at one movement Roch's heavy ïand had pushed him upon the bascule and slid him under the knife, which crashed down and shore away bis head. A great jet of blood shot out from the severed arteries of the neck - it is a mat;er of surprise to all who seo a corpse ifter decapitation where the neck goes o - and splashing in the face of one of ;he executioners in its p ■ ssage feil upon xnd soaked the uniform of a gend'arme, while in the tree above the low and lovng twitter was heard of a mother-bird o her awakened fiedglings.