f. He opened the trial by relating the
circumstances, and declaiming upon the enormity of the offence, by which
it appeared that the prisoner stood charged with robbery, accompanied
with breach of hospitality; which, in that country, be the amount of the
plunder ever so trifling, is at present capital. The address of the
public accuser was very florid, and vehement, and attended by violent
gestures, occasionally graceful. The pleaders of Normandy are considered
as the most eloquent men in France, I have heard several of them, but
they appear to me, to be too impassioned. Their motions in speaking
frequently look like madness. He ransacked his language to furnish
himself with reproachful epithets against the miserable wretch by the
side of him, who with his hands in his bosom appeared to listen to him,
with great sang froid. The witnesses who were kept separate, previous to
their giving their evidence, were numerous, and proved many robberies
against him, attended with aggravated breaches of hospitality. The court
entered into proofs of offences committed by the prisoner at different
times, and upon different persons. The women who gave their testimony,
exhibited a striking distinction between the timidity of english
females, confronting the many eyes of a crowded court of justice, and
the calm self possession with which the french ladies here delivered
their unperturbed testimony. The charges were clearly proved, and the
prisoner was called upon for his defence. Undismayed, and with all the
practised hardihood of an Old Bailey felon, he calmly declared, that he
purchased the pile of booty produced in the court, for sums of money,
the amount of which, he did not then know, of persons he could not name,
and in places which he did not remember. He had no advocate. The subject
was next resumed, and closed by the official orator who opened it. The
court retired, and the criminal was reconducted to the prison behind the
hall. After an absence of about twenty minutes, a bell rang to announce
the return of the judges, the prisoner entered now, escorted by a file
of national guards, to hear his fate. The court then resumed its
sitting. The president addressed the unhappy man, very briefly,
recapitulated his offences, and read the decree of the republic upon
them, by which he doomed him to lose his head at four o'clock that
afternoon.

It was then ten minutes past one!! The face of this wretched being
presented a fine subject for