nd uttered a strange gurgling sound
unlike any expression of the human voice I ever heard. I was indeed
uncertain whether he understood me or not. In a few minutes more, the cell
was crowded--the father, mother, and daughter, the chaplain, the messenger,
and several of the officials, all bursting in, to see the condition of the
criminal. To this I was not averse; because the more excitement that could
be produced in the mind of the youth, the greater chance remained of our
being able to keep off the deadly effects of the drug. A thousand times did
the parent and mother sound into his dull ear the vocable pregnant with so
much relief to him and his friends; but it was not until two hours
afterwards that he was so far recovered as to understand perfectly the
narrow escape he had made from death. In the evening he was conveyed home
in a carriage; and, as they were leaving the jail, he looked out at the
grim apparatus which had been erected for him, and which the workmen were
removing in the midst of a dense crowd of citizens.

Some days afterwards, Eugene D---- had almost entirely recovered from the
effects of the poison. One day when I called, I found him lying on a sofa,
with his mother sitting by his side. She took her eyes off her son, and
bent them on me till tears filled them.

"Before you entered," she said, "I was talking to Eugene about the request
I made to you in the jail on that dreadful day, to let my son die.
Repeatedly since, have I thought of my wild words; but they know little of
human nature, at least little of the feelings of a mother in my situation,
who could brand them as unnatural, or doubt the sanity that recognised
fully their effect."

"I am too well apprised, madam," I replied, "of the workings of that organ,
whose changes often startle ourselves, to be surprised at the words you
then made use of. I knew not, after all, if you did not exhibit as much
heroism as Brutus, who condemned his son to death; certainly more than
Zaleucus, who condemned his to the loss of an eye, having first submitted
to the loss of his own, to make the love of a father quadrate with the
justice of the law-giver."

"And what say you to yourself, to whom I owe the safety of my Eugene?" she
added.

"An Acesias might have accomplished all that I accomplished, madam--for all
I did was to keep off sleep; but, if the secret must needs be told, I had
some doubts at least of the humanity of my proceedings, whatever I might
h