Deibler, who was born in Dijon in 1823, is a joiner by trade. His first head (as chief executioner) was Laprade's, in 1879, and the case was one of his worst. Laprade, who had murdered his father, mother, and grandmother, felt a natural disinclination to join them on the other side, and struggled so desperately on the scaffold that Deibler had to thrust his head by main force into the lunette. M. Deibler is lame, and usually carries a very old umbrella. "Scenes" on the scaffold are rare. The victim may struggle for a moment, but it is only for a moment that, in the practised hands of the assistants, he can postpone the inevitable. In general, the whole affair lasts but a few seconds. There is no such thing as a "last dying speech" from the guillotine. Even if the man were not too dazed to speak, time would not be allowed him. There is time only for the last ministrations of the Church, which are almost always rejected. The instant the criminal is secured on the bascule, M. Deibler touches the spring, the knife shears through the uncovered neck, there is a spurt of blood in the air, and all is over. The head and body are enclosed at once in a rough coffin, and trundled off with a guard of mounted _gendarmes_ (officials and priest following in a cab) to the Champ des Navets, or Turnip Field, at Ivry Cemetery, where a burial service is read. The remains are then handed over to one of the medical schools for dissection, and what is left is interred. THE END. [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Novels by Tighe Hopkins. ---------- ="Lady Bonnie's Experiment."= (Vol. V. of "Cassell's Pocket Library.") "Its sparkle keeps it alive from cover to cover. The whole thing is a charming bit of _étourderie_, without a dull line in it."—_Athenæum._ "A delightful fantasy. Woven with a graceful dexterity which ought to be pondered by 'prentice story-tellers."—_Daily Chronicle._ Nell Haffenden: A Strictly Conventional Story. In two volumes. "The author sculpts at least half-a-dozen strong individualities, and introduces us to a variety of shifting scenes, from the studios of artistic Bohemia to mission work in Eastern London. Wherever we are taken we are impressed with the conviction that the author knows what he is writing about, and in the description of the Bloomsbury boarding-house he is humorous enough to remind us of Martin Chuzzlewit's first experiences in New York."—_Times._ The Nugents of Carriconna: A Story More or Less Irish. Fourth edition in one volume.