the arrival of
the vehicle which was to convey him to the county prison, Alfred Bourdon
requested an interview with me. I very reluctantly consented; but steeled
as I was against him, I could not avoid feeling dreadfully shocked at the
change which so brief an interval had wrought upon him. It had done the
work of years. Despair--black, utter despair--was written in every
lineament of his expressive countenance.

"I have requested to see you," said the unhappy culprit, "rather than Dr.
Curteis, because he, I know, is bitterly prejudiced against me. But _you_
will not refuse, I think, the solemn request of a dying man--for a dying
man I feel myself to be--however long or short the interval which stands
between me and the scaffold. It is not with a childish hope that any
assertion of mine can avail before the tribunal of the law against the
evidence adduced this day, that I, with all the solemnity befitting a man
whose days are numbered, declare to you that I am wholly innocent of the
crime laid to my charge. I have no such expectation; I seek only that
you, in pity of my youth and untimely fate, should convey to her whom I
have madly presumed to worship this message: 'Alfred Bourdon was mad, but
not blood-guilty; and of the crime laid to his charge he is innocent as
an unborn child.'"

"The pure and holy passion, young man," said I, somewhat startled by his
impressive manner, "however presumptuous, as far as social considerations
are concerned, it might be, by which you affect to be inspired, is
utterly inconsistent with the cruel, dastardly crime of which such
damning evidence has an hour since been given"--

"Say no more, sir," interrupted Bourdon, sinking back in his seat, and
burying his face in his hands: "it were a bootless errand; she _could_
not, in the face of that evidence, believe my unsupported assertion! It
were as well perhaps she did not. And yet, sir, it is hard to be
trampled into a felon's grave, loaded with the maledictions of those
whom you would coin your heart to serve and bless! Ah, sir," he
continued, whilst tears of agony streamed through his firmly-closed
fingers, "you cannot conceive the unutterable bitterness of the pang
which rends the heart of him who feels that he is not only despised,
but loathed, hated, execrated, by her whom his soul idolizes! Mine was
no boyish, transient passion: it has grown with my growth, and
strengthened with my strength. My life has been but one long dream of
h