A very curious story was communicated to the press immediately after his execution, which has since been definitely contradicted. It was to the effect that a certain Doctor Velpeau had obtained a promise from La Pommerais that he would make him some sign after he had passed the threshold of the grave. Velpeau is reported to have said to La Pommerais: “When the knife falls I shall be there, just in front of the scaffold, and I shall arrange that your head, when decapitated, comes at once into my hands. I propose to whisper into your ear, ‘Monsieur, as we have agreed, will you now, on hearing my voice, lower your right eyelid three times, keeping the left eye open?’” Velpeau declared that he carried out his part of the compact, and was prepared to swear that the severed head had twice made the sign as arranged; but the eyelid would not lift a third time, and, although Velpeau again and again asked for the sign, none came, and the head assumed a fixed rigidity. Death had put an end to the convulsive spasms by which possibly the previous signs had been produced. The story is extravagant and apocryphal, for the Abbé Crozes, when invited to give his opinion, settled the matter by declaring that Velpeau had never had any conversation with the dead man, and as a matter of fact was not present at the execution at all. France contains in her criminal records one of the worst murders ever committed in any civilised country. The Crime of Pantin, as it was called at the time, was the wholesale massacre of a family--father, mother and six children--with the sole idea of becoming possessed of property to which no survivor could lay claim. Troppmann, who perpetrated it, laid the plan with such devilish ingenuity that for a long time the guilt was attributed to the father, Jean Kinck, assisted by his eldest son, and the first inquiries were centred upon them.