amiable qualities of his head and for his wit. At college he was
a model for good conduct, application, and purity of morals; but the
intimacy which he formed with some libertine young men during his stay at
the Academy of Paris entirely changed him. He contracted an insatiable
desire for play, and even his own father said to him, "You will die by
the hands of the executioner." Being destitute of money, the young Count
took up the trade of a pickpocket, which he carried on in the pit of the
theatres, and by which he made considerable gains in silver-hilted swords
and watches. At length, having lost a sum of five-and-twenty thousand
crowns at the fair of Saint-Germain, he was led to commit that crime
which he has just expiated on the scaffold. For the purpose of
discharging the debt he had contracted, he sent for a banker's clerk to
bring him certain bank bills, which he proposed to purchase. Having
connected himself with two other villains, he attacked the clerk as soon
as he arrived, and stabbed him with poniards which he had bought three
days before on the Pont Neuf. Hoping to conceal the share which he had
taken in this crime, he went immediately after its perpetration to the
Commissaire du Quartier, and told him, with a cool and determined air,
that he had been obliged, in his own defence, to kill the clerk, who had
attacked him and put him in danger of his life. The Commissaire looking
at him steadfastly, said, "You are covered with blood, but you are not
even wounded; I must retain you in custody until I can examine this
affair more minutely." At this moment the accomplice entered the room.
"Here, sir," said the Count to the Commissaire, "is one who can bear
testimony that the account I have given you of this business is perfectly
true." The accomplice was quite terrified at hearing this; he thought
that Count Horn had confessed his crime, and that there could be no
advantage in continuing to deny it; he therefore confessed all that had
taken place, and thus the murder was revealed. The Count was not more
than two-and-twenty years of age, and one of the handsomest men in Paris.
Some of the first persons in France solicited in his favour, but the Duke
Regent thought it necessary to make an example of him on account of the
prevalent excess of crime. Horn was publicly broken on the wheel with
his second accomplice; the other died just before: they were both
gentlemen and of noble families. When they arrived at the plac