s, and he
seemed about to stumble; but the executioner, with the courteous
attention of a host who knows how to do the honours of his house,
sustained him by the arm, and placed him upon the plank of the
guillotine. There Peter Leroux found the clerk of the court, who had
come for the purpose of reading formally the order for execution; the
gendarmes, who were charged to see that the public peace was kept
during the business about to be transacted; and the assistants of the
executioner, who, notwithstanding the ill name which has been given to
them, pointed out to him, with a complaisance full of delicate
consideration, the precise position in which to place himself under
the axe. One minute after, Peter Leroux's head was divorced from his
body, which operation was accomplished with such dexterity, that many
of those present at the spectacle asked of their neighbours if it was
already finished; and were told that it was; upon which they remarked,
that it was the last time they would put themselves so much out of the
way for so little.

Three months had passed since the head and body of Peter Leroux had
been cast into a corner of the cemetery, and, in all probability, the
grave no longer concealed aught but his bones, when a new session of
assizes was opened, and M. Desalleux had again to support a capital
indictment.

The day previous, he quitted at an early hour a ball to which he had
been invited with all his family, at a chateau in the environs, and
returned alone to the city, in order to prepare his case for the
morrow.

The night was dark; a warm wind from the south whistled drearily,
while the buzz of the gay scene that he had left seemed to linger in
his ears. A feeling of melancholy stole over him. The memory of many
people whom he had known, and who were dead, returned to his mind;
and, scarcely knowing why, he began to think of Peter Leroux.

Nevertheless, as he drew near the city, and the first lights of the
suburbs began to appear, all his sombre ideas vanished, and as soon as
he found himself again at his desk, surrounded by his books and
papers, he thought no longer of anything but his oration, which he had
determined should be even yet more brilliant than any that had
preceded it.

His system of indictment was already nearly settled. It is
singular, by the way, that French legal expression, a 'system of
indictment'--that is to say, an absolute manner of grouping an
_ensemble_ of facts and proofs,