standing in a potato-field near by.

I took it. I returned; I raised it like a club, and with one blow of
the edge I cleft the fisherman's head. Oh! he bled, this
one!--rose-colored blood. It flowed into the water quite gently. And I
went away with a grave step. If I had been seen! Ah! I should have made
an excellent assassin.

October 25. The affair of the fisherman makes a great noise. His
nephew, who fished with him, is charged with the murder.

October 26. The examining magistrate affirms that the nephew is guilty.
Everybody in town believes it. Ah! ah!

October 27. The nephew defends himself badly. He had gone to the
village to buy bread and cheese, he declares. He swears that his uncle
had been killed in his absence! Who would believe him?

October 28. The nephew has all but confessed, so much have they made
him lose his head! Ah! Justice!

November 15. There are overwheming proofs against the nephew, who was
his uncle's heir. I shall preside at the sessions.

January 25, 1852. To death! to death! to death! I have had him
condemned to death! The advocate-general spoke like an angel! Ah! Yet
another! I shall go to see him executed!

March 10. It is done. They guillotined him this morning. He died very
well! very well! That gave me pleasure! How fine it is to see a man's
head cut off!

Now, I shall wait, I can wait. It would take such a little thing to let
myself be caught.

* * * * *

The manuscript contained more pages, but told of no new crime.

Alienist physicians to whom the awful story has been submitted declare
that there are in the world many unknown madmen; as adroit and as
terrible as this monstrous lunatic.

AN UNFORTUNATE LIKENESS

It was during one of those sudden changes of the electric light, which
at one time throws rays of exquisite pale pink, of a liquid gold
filtered through the light hair of a woman, and at another, rays of
bluish hue with strange tints, such as the sky assumes at twilight, in
which the women with their bare shoulders looked like living
flowers--it was, I say, on the night of the first of January at
Montonirail's, the dainty painter of tall, undulating figures, of
bright dresses, of Parisian prettiness--that tall Pescarelle, whom some
called "Pussy," though I do not know why, suddenly said in a low voice:

"Well, people were not altogether mistaken, in fact, were only half
wrong when they coupled my name with that of pretty Lucy Pl