as soon as the jury had found the prisoners guilty, he
immediately rose up and passed sentence of death upon them, a thing
never known before nor since in Durham, the custom being not to pass
sentence until the close of the assizes.

The Life of JACQUES PERRIER, a French Robber and Murderer

As I have stepped in the former stories a little back in time, so in
this I shall make bold to go out of our own nation, to relate a very
extraordinary passage which happened at Paris in the beginning of the
last century, because it will serve as a notable instance of that
confusion and fear which guilt brings over the souls of the most
hardened villains and thereby renders them often instruments of justice
upon themselves; so that it seems not virtue only is its own reward, but
vice also brings upon itself those torments which it ought to feel. Thus
Providence ordereth, with inscrutable wisdom, that every man should feel
happiness or misery according as his own demeanour serves. But it is now
time that we hearken to the story.

It happened that a certain architect, who was in high esteem with the
greatest nobles in France for his excellent skill in building after the
Italian model, and had thereby obtained both a great reputation and a
large estate, being a generous and charitable man, took into his house
one Jacques Perrier, in the nature of an accountant, for the better
ordering of his affairs. For the six years that this Jacques lived in
his master's house, never any man was known to behave better or more
commendably than he did. At length he married and had children, so that
the master looking upon him as a staid discreet person, of whose
fidelity he had indubitable proofs; he therefore gave him the charge of
everything, when he went to a country house of his, a small distance
from Paris, where he sometimes stayed for a week or so to unbend his
mind and enjoy the benefit of the summer season.

At last, Jacques observing what great wealth he had acquired, began to
be covetous and desirous of obtaining it; and after having cast it long
in his head how he might obtain it, he at length resolved with himself
to join with certain villains who at that time robbed in the streets and
committed murders on the roads about Paris. Gaining notice of a house
where such people frequented, he found ways and means to be admitted
into the room where they had their consultations. And the person who
introduced him having promised for hi