manner:--

"Of all the events which, in these latter times, have afflicted the
department of the Ain, there is none which has caused a more profound
and lively sensation than the tragical death of the lady, Felicite
Alcazar, wife of Sebastian Benedict Peytel, notary, at Belley. At the
end of October, 1838, Madame Peytel quitted that town, with her husband,
and their servant Louis Rey, in order to pass a few days at Macon:
at midnight, the inhabitants of Belley were suddenly awakened by the
arrival of Monsieur Peytel, by his cries, and by the signs which he
exhibited of the most lively agitation: he implored the succors of all
the physicians in the town; knocked violently at their doors; rung at
the bells of their houses with a sort of frenzy, and announced that his
wife, stretched out, and dying, in his carriage, had just been shot, on
the Lyons road, by his domestic, whose life Peytel himself had taken.

"At this recital a number of persons assembled, and what a spectacle was
presented to their eyes.

"A young woman lay at the bottom of a carriage, deprived of life; her
whole body was wet, and seemed as if it had just been plunged into
the water. She appeared to be severely wounded in the face; and her
garments, which were raised up, in spite of the cold and rainy weather,
left the upper part of her knees almost entirely exposed. At the sight
of this half-naked and inanimate body, all the spectators were affected.
People said that the first duty to pay to a dying woman was, to preserve
her from the cold, to cover her. A physician examined the body; he
declared that all remedies were useless; that Madame Peytel was dead and
cold.

"The entreaties of Peytel were redoubled; he demanded fresh succors,
and, giving no heed to the fatal assurance which had just been given
him, required that all the physicians in the place should be sent for.
A scene so strange and so melancholy; the incoherent account given by
Peytel of the murder of his wife; his extraordinary movements; and the
avowal which he continued to make, that he had despatched the murderer,
Rey, with strokes of his hammer, excited the attention of Lieutenant
Wolf, commandant of gendarmes: that officer gave orders for the
immediate arrest of Peytel; but the latter threw himself into the
arms of a friend, who interceded for him, and begged the police not
immediately to seize upon his person.

"The corpse of Madame Peytel was transported to her apartment; the
ble