for; but
the patrol pinned Dubarle safely, and I griped Levasseur with a strength
and ferocity against which he was powerless as an infant. Our victory
was complete; and two hours afterward, the recaptured convicts were
safely lodged in a station-house.
I caused Madame Duquesne to be as gently undeceived the next morning as
possible with respect to her child; but the reaction and disappointment
proved too much for her wavering intellect. She relapsed into positive
insanity, and was placed in Bedlam, where she remained two years. At the
end of that period she was pronounced convalescent. A sufficient sum of
money was raised by myself and others, not only to send her to Paris,
but to enable her to set up as a milliner in a small but respectable
way. As lately as last May, when I saw her there, she was in health both
of mind and body, and doing comfortably.
With the concurrence of the police authorities, very little was said
publicly respecting my entrapment. It might perhaps have excited a
monomania among liberated convicts--colored and exaggerated as every
incident would have been for the amusement of the public--to attempt
similar exploits. I was also anxious to conceal the peril I had
encountered from my wife; and it was not till I had left the police
force that she was informed of it. Levasseur and Dubarle were convicted
of returning from transportation before the term for which they had been
sentenced had expired, and were this time sent across the seas for life.
The reporters of the morning papers, or rather the reporter for the
"Times," "Herald," "Chronicle," "Post," and "Advertiser," gave precisely
the same account, even to the misspelling of Levasseur's name,
dismissing the brief trial in the following paragraph, under the head of
"Old Bailey Sessions:"--"Alphonse Dubarle (24), and Sebastian Levasson
(49), were identified as unlawfully-returned convicts, and sentenced to
transportation for life. The prisoners, it was understood, were
connected with the late plate-robbery in Portman-square; but as a
conviction could not have increased their punishment, the indictment was
not pressed."
Levasseur, I had almost forgotten to state, admitted that it was he who
wounded me in Ryder's-court, Leicester-square.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 16: See New Monthly Magazine for November.]
WORDSWORTH AND CARLYLE.
For well nigh thirty-four years the public curiosity has been excited by
the knowledge that there exist
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