. Pauw, a poison difficult to detect, called _digitalline_, the
essential principle of our common foxglove; she died unconscious of his
deception, loving him to the last, and he claimed the 515,000 francs at
the insurance office. He was suspected, accused, and tried. The old
suspicions relative to his mother-in-law were revived; the bodies were
exhumed and examined; upon evidence entirely circumstantial and
technical, he was convicted, and sentenced to be guillotined. His
learning and standing made the trial a famous one; his bearing during
the long proceedings was calm and collected; he was handsome, and had
much sympathy: but the jury found him guilty, and the Emperor refused to
extend his clemency to the case. He was put in a strait jacket and
locked up in La Roquette, the prison for the condemned.

The prison of _La Roquette_ (or the Rocket Prison) is situated in the
eastern suburbs of Paris, a mile beyond the Bastile. It does not look
unlike our American jails; a high exterior wall of rough stone, over the
top of which one gets a glimpse of the prison gables, with a huge gate
in the arched portal, guarded forever by sentinels. Before this gate is
a small open plot of ground, planted with trees. _Rue de la Roquette_
passes between it and a second prison, immediately facing the first,
called the _Prison des Jeunes Detenus_, or, as we would say in America,
the "House of Refuge." Standing between the two jails, and looking away
from Paris, one will see the great metropolitan cemetery of _Pere la
Chaise_, scarcely a stone's throw distant, and behind him will be the
great _abbatoir_ or public slaughter-house of Menilmontant, with the
vast area of roofs and spires of Paris stretching beyond it to the
horizon. It was to this region of vacant lots and lonesome, glowering
houses, that thousands of Parisians bent their steps the night before
the execution. The news had gone abroad that la Pommerais would not be
pardoned. It was also generally credited that this would be the last
execution ever held in Paris, since there is a general desire for the
abolition of capital punishment in France, and a conviction that the
Legislature, at its next session, will substitute life-imprisonment.
This, with the rarity of the event, and that terrible allurement of
blood which distinguishes all populaces, brought out all the excitable
folk of the town; and at dusk, on the night before the expiation, the
whole neighborhood of La Roquette was c