, while a fierce voice hissed in his ear,
"Lassalle! your hour has come! Belleville, Descartes, and Monval, have
gone before you to answer for their crimes. You are the fourth, and
last. Die, villain!"

But Lacour struggled free, and shouted for help. The door fell with a
crash; the soldiers poured in, and the female assassin was secured and
disarmed. Eager to unravel the mystery, the police officer tore the
mask from the face of the unknown, and recognized in the wild and
inflamed features of the assassin of the Rue La Harpe, the Rue
Richelieu, and the Boulevard des Italiens, his sister, Maria Lacour!

* * * * *

But Maria Lacour died not on the scaffold. She was saved from that
doom by unquestionable proofs of insanity. Her sad story was learned
afterwards from various sources, and corroborated, in the most
important particulars, by Captain Lassalle, who was arrested for a
criminal offence shortly after the above incident, and made a full
confession of his guilt. It appeared, then, that the house of the
widow Lacour, a short time before the opening of our story, had been
broken into by four villains, named Belleville, Descartes, Monval, and
Lassalle. They were all men of bad habits, and urgently necessitous,
but yet of decent education and family. Hearing a noise in the
kitchen, Maria descended only in time to witness the death pangs of
the mother. The three first-named ruffians, demons who had murdered to
rob, wished to destroy this witness of their guilt, but the fourth
interceded, and her life was spared. But the horror of the deed
overthrew her reason. She fled from the house that night a maniac;
whither she wandered, how she was cared for, for a long time was and
must ever remain a mystery. She finally, it seems, became in a degree
tranquillized, found her way to Paris, and there she supported herself
by her extraordinary skill as an embroideress.

But it was conjectured that her memory of early events had gone. The
casual sight of one of the assassins, all of whom had prospered and
risen in the world, revived the recollection of that one fearful night
of horror, and with it came to her disordered brain the thirst of
vengeance. It did not appear that for a moment she had dreamed of
appealing to the interposition of the law. To execute a summary
vengeance, personally, was her terrible resolve. With a cunning that
often supplies the loss of reason with the insane, she contrived
s