moment opportune to make a clean breast, and, whilst eating, began his confession. Meanwhile Grethel, superintending in the kitchen the breakfast of her household, missed and asked for her favourite. “He is in the master’s room,” was the reply, “eating the pottage.” The headsman’s wife grew pale as death, for the pottage was poisoned. She hurried into the room just as Veit, after completing his confession, fell in convulsions upon the floor; and her husband, indignant at her infidelity, stripped his leathern girdle and furiously beat her, loading her with opprobrious epithets. She escaped from his hands, and ran into the town, exhibited the cuts upon her face and arms to the authorities, accused her husband of this ill-treatment, and of having poisoned his assistant in a moment of groundless jealousy. Benz was forthwith arrested. Appearances were strong against him. He had gone out of his way to invite his servant to eat the mess intended for himself. And when the effects of the poison manifested themselves, he had beaten his wife instead of rendering assistance to the sufferer, who had died soon afterwards. His protestations of innocence were discredited; and as he persisted in not confessing a crime he had not committed, he was conducted to that torture-chamber whose horrors he had so often superintended. He shrunk not at sight of the rack, but stood upon his rights and privileges; repudiated the jurisdiction of the city council, and appealed to a higher tribunal. “My lords would not listen to this, and appealed, in their turn, to the special privileges of the town; but the strange headsman, whom they had summoned to their assistance, pulled down to the wrist the shirt sleeves he had rolled up, put on his doublet, and declared, with steadfast voice, that he must certainly, in execution of a legal judgment, torture his own son, if required, but that he would not act against the Emperor’s ordinances, or lay hand upon a brother-craftsman in obedience to an arbitrary command.” So the counsellors, finding the executive fail them, and being also, as it would appear, legally in the wrong, were compelled to concede Master Benz’s claim to be arraigned before another court of judicature. The delay was the headsman’s salvation. Count Ruprecht, a sort of lord of the manor, and nobleman of great weight in the district, obtained admission to his dungeon, under pretence of consulting him about a disease, which “leech and surgeon, wise-women and farriers, had been unable to cure.” From this it would appear that in those days the executioner either dabbled in the medical art, or was supposed to possess prescriptions (perhaps charms) of efficacy in certain cases. We have been unable to trace any particulars connected with this belief; and Mr Chézy, although he must have access in Germany to many more sources of such information than are open to us, leaves his readers, as usual, wholly in the dark.