But in reference to this most extraordinary culprit, it remains to be mentioned that the police discovered and proved before the _Cour d'assises de la Seine_, on the 10th July, 1819, that Coignard, even after he had attained to rank and opulence, was in communication with several of the most accomplished robbers of Paris, and that he aided them by using the opportunities derived from his intimacy with persons of wealth and proprietors of costly mansions, to ascertain where their money and plate were kept, and at what time the property might be pillaged with the least risk of interruption or detection. When he found the proofs of his past and of his continued delinquencies accumulated beyond any possibility of resisting an adverse judgment, he attempted to escape, and on being arrested, he discharged several pistol shots at the police officers, by which two of them were dangerously wounded and permanently disabled. Amongst the associates of his aristocratic career, there was far less indignation expressed at his robberies or dishonest proclivities, than at his audacious assumption of exalted rank, and his intrusion amongst a class, the members of which would evince greater lenity to the opening of a banker's coffers by means of false keys, than to the attainment of admission to a courtly circle by a pretended title of nobility. Conclusive evidence having been adduced of the identity of Coignard as an escaped convict, and also of his subsequent complicity in several criminal transactions, he was remitted to Toulon, there to be imprisoned for life and kept to hard labor. When he left the Bicetre, on the 24th July, 1819, on the galley chain, an enormous crowd assembled to witness his departure, and his demeanour was remarked as indicating neither despondency nor contrition. In the towns through which he passed, he excited the utmost curiosity. The false Comtesse, Maria Rosa, proceeded to Toulon, and subsisting on whatever she had been able to save from the wreck of her previous fortunes, she continued firmly attached to the wretched Coignard. She visited him whenever permitted, and afforded him every attention that the rules of the prison allowed. She died in 1829, and he survived her only until the succeeding spring. I think that in laying before my readers the details of this romantic reality, I have given them an instance of fact being far more extraordinary than fiction. The materials in the narrative last related, are not suitable for being woven into one piece in the loom of fiction. Those who would make a Count the hero or principal character of an imaginative production, would shrink from choosing him amongst the galley slaves of Toulon. Those who would make a convict a prominent actor in any ideal drama, would consider it too ridiculous to dignify him with a title immediately after his escape from penal servitude.