A notability of the guillotine was Avinain, executed in 1867 for a series of murders, all having similar features. Several corpses were picked up, all of which had been very carefully dismembered by some hand practised in dissection. In all, the head and limbs had been skilfully removed from the trunk; but death had first been inflicted by strangulation or many terrible wounds. The remains had generally been found in the neighborhood of the Seine, and suspicion at length attached to a certain Jean Charles, otherwise Charles Alfonse, who had lived in four different houses on the riverside. The police now discovered that there were stables and sheds forming part of these several dwellings. In one building they picked up a saw, a hammer and an axe, which evidently had been used for the purpose of dismembering the bodies. These, according to French custom, had been exhibited at the Morgue, and one of the articles was recognised by a young man as having belonged to his father, who had recently disappeared. The deceased was a forage merchant. He had come to Paris to sell a cartload of hay, and had met Charles, with whom he agreed on a price. The purchaser very civilly offered him the accommodation of his stables for the night and a bed at his house, so that the purchase might be completed next morning. It appeared in the trial that before this another person had sold forage and had accepted hospitality for the night, but when the host came, insisting that the light should be extinguished for fear of setting fire to the barn, he carried in his hand a hammer; and the guest, a little suspicious, declared that he always slept with a light burning, and in a very significant fashion took out his knife as though to use it in self-defence. There was little doubt that this man with the hammer was the same Charles already indicated, and the police proceeded to inquire into his identity. He proved to be one Charles Avinain, a butcher by trade, who had recently been a convict in Cayenne. Since his return from transportation he had frequently been in trouble, and was now easily traced and arrested by means of clues furnished by his wife and daughter. He still lived at the riverside, and nearly made his escape from the police by means of a trap door in the floor of the basement which opened on to a passage. Several murders were brought home to him, committed either with hammer or knife. His victims were mostly forage merchants, and he had dealt with the bodies in the same barbarous fashion. It is recorded of him that he never exhibited the slightest remorse, until the very last moment, and then it was under the influence of overwhelming terror as he trod the steps of the scaffold. He had always repulsed the chaplain, but in the end accepted his ministrations, confessed, and received absolution.