In Franconia the fat of criminals is sometimes inquired for at the druggist’s, and a substance, so called, is handed over. When in Prussia executions took place in public, there was always friction between the armed guards and the crowd of women, who at all costs pressed forward with spoons, cups, and dishes to catch some of the blood. At the execution of a murderer at Hanau in 1861, several men leapt on to the scaffold and drank the steaming blood. At the execution of two murderers in Berlin in 1864, the executioner’s assistants dipped numbers of white handkerchiefs in the blood, and received two thalers for each. The bystanders even call upon the criminal for his most powerful intercession in Heaven. According to Pitré, there is still in Sicily a fetichistic adoration for the souls of the beheaded. The criminal is a person endowed with divine force, to be treated with awe and reverence, and whose blood and flesh have something of the old sacramental power of infusing the divine one’s energy into the body of him who eats of it.[112] [Illustration: Lacenaire.] In a less crude form, and among persons who lay claim to a somewhat higher degree of culture, the same veneration has long existed and still exists. Appert, writing immediately after the execution of Lacenaire at Paris, says:--“His portraits were displayed on quays and boulevards. From all sides exquisite meats and delicate wines reached his cell, while, two steps away, miserable creatures driven to crime by hunger ate the black and hard bread of the gaol. Every day some man of letters visited him, carefully noting his sarcasms, his phrases composed in drunkenness or studiously calculated for effect; women, young, beautiful, and elegantly attired, solicited the honour of being presented to him, and were in despair at his refusal; a noble countess, the mother of a family, addressed verses to him, and drew upon herself a reply at which no doubt she blushed. He himself mocked at the infatuation he excited. ‘They come to me,’ he said, ‘as they would ask a ticket from M. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire to see the elephants’ den.’” When Cartouche was in prison he was visited by many distinguished ladies and overwhelmed by their attentions. The Abbé Crozes tells us that Tropmann, the brutal murderer, when in prison received a great number of letters from ladies, full of anxiety in regard to his spiritual welfare, and asking for the most minute details concerning him. Some of these letters were reproduced in the _Figaro_. I have not seen them, but Dr. Corre says: “Their perusal stupefies one; they witness, among women who have been well brought up, to an ill-defined obsession, of the nature of which they are even themselves unaware, and which perhaps had its origin in an unavowable sentiment of love, born of mystery and the unknown.” It is not only women in whom this ancient worship of the criminal still survives. In a recent newspaper I