October 25. The affair of the fisherman makes a great noise. His nephew, who fished with him, is charged with the murder. October 26. The examining magistrate affirms that the nephew is guilty. Everybody in town believes it. Ah! ah! October 27. The nephew defends himself badly. He had gone to the village to buy bread and cheese, he declares. He swears that his uncle had been killed in his absence! Who would believe him? October 28. The nephew has all but confessed, so much have they made him lose his head! Ah! Justice! November 15. There are overwheming proofs against the nephew, who was his uncle's heir. I shall preside at the sessions. January 25, 1852. To death! to death! to death! I have had him condemned to death! The advocate-general spoke like an angel! Ah! Yet another! I shall go to see him executed! March 10. It is done. They guillotined him this morning. He died very well! very well! That gave me pleasure! How fine it is to see a man's head cut off! Now, I shall wait, I can wait. It would take such a little thing to let myself be caught. * * * * * The manuscript contained more pages, but told of no new crime. Alienist physicians to whom the awful story has been submitted declare that there are in the world many unknown madmen; as adroit and as terrible as this monstrous lunatic. AN UNFORTUNATE LIKENESS It was during one of those sudden changes of the electric light, which at one time throws rays of exquisite pale pink, of a liquid gold filtered through the light hair of a woman, and at another, rays of bluish hue with strange tints, such as the sky assumes at twilight, in which the women with their bare shoulders looked like living flowers--it was, I say, on the night of the first of January at Montonirail's, the dainty painter of tall, undulating figures, of bright dresses, of Parisian prettiness--that tall Pescarelle, whom some called "Pussy," though I do not know why, suddenly said in a low voice: "Well, people were not altogether mistaken, in fact, were only half wrong when they coupled my name with that of pretty Lucy Plonelle. She had caught me, just as a birdcatcher on a frosty morning catches an imprudent wren on a limed twig--in fact, she might have done whatever she liked with me. "I was under the charm of her enigmatical and mocking smile, that smile in which her teeth gleamed cruelly between her red lips, and glistened as if they were ready to bite and to heighten the pleasure of the most delightful, the most voluptuous, kiss by pain. "I loved everything in her--her feline suppleness, her languid looks which emerged from her half-closed lids, full of promises and temptation, her somewhat extreme elegance, and her hands, those long, delicate white hands, with blue veins, like the bloodless hands of a female saint in a stained glass window, and her slender fingers, on which only the large blood-drop of a ruby glittered.