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On the morning of the 28th I left Lahr, and, retracing my steps, passed through Fribourg, Neubrisach, and Colmar, and arrived, at eleven o'clock in the evening, at Strasburg without the least embarrassment. My carriage was taken to the Hotel de la Fleur, while I went to lodge in a small chamber, which had been engaged for me, in the Rue de la Fontaine.
On Friday night, while those who formerly were called les maitres des basses oeuvres* were erecting the scaffold at the Barriere de Fontainebleau, the rapporteur of the court-martial, accompanied by the clerk of the court, repaired to the Fort of Vanves. * The executioner in France is officially styled l'executeur des hautes-oeuvres. Daix and Lahr, who were to die, were sleeping.
There are five of them: Nourry, a poor child of seventeen whose father and mother died insane, type of the gamin of Paris that revolutions make a hero and riots a murderer; Daix, blind of one eye, lame, and with only one arm, a bon pauvre of the Bicetre Hospital, who underwent the operation of trepanning three years ago, and who has a little daughter eight years old whom he adores; Lahr, nicknamed the Fireman, whose wife was confined the day after his condemnation, giving life at the moment she received death; Chopart, a bookseller's assistant, who has been mixed up in some rather discreditable pranks of youth; and finally Vappreaux junior, who pleaded an alibi and who, if the four others are to be believed, was not at the Barriere de Fontainebleau at all during the three days of June.
They understood, and, joyful and terror-stricken, fled into the adjoining casement. Daix and Lahr, however, did not understand. They sat up and gazed about them with wild, frightened eyes. The executioner and his assistants fell upon them and bound them. No one spoke a word. The condemned men began to realise what it all meant and uttered terrible cries.
I have found in my friends boundless devotion, and I have no reproaches to make against any one whatever. "On the 27th I arrived at Lahr, a small town of the Grand-duchy of Baden, where I awaited intelligence. Near that place the axle of my carriage broke, and I was compelled to remain there for a day.
The Council of State, such as it then was, consulted under the terms of the Constitution, rendered an opinion in favour of the execution. M. Cresson, counsel for Daix and Lahr, waited upon the President. He was an emotional and eloquent young man. He pleaded for these men, for the wives who were not yet widows, for the children who were not yet orphans, and while speaking he wept.
M. Ami Boue, well known by his numerous works on geology and a well-practised observer in every branch of the science, disinterred in the year 1823 with his own hands many bones of a human skeleton from ancient undisturbed loess at Lahr, nearly opposite Strasburg, on the right side of the great valley of the Rhine.
But the majority prevailed, and before the Cabinet separated Odilon Barrot, the Minister of Justice, signed the order for the execution of three of the condemned men, Daix, Lahr and Chopart. The sentences of Nourry and Vappreaux, junior, were commuted to penal servitude for life. The execution was fixed for the next morning, Friday.
"If we had not bound them," said the executioner, "they would have devoured us!" Then Lahr collapsed and began to pray while the decree for their execution was read to them. Daix continued to struggle, sobbing, and roaring with horror. These men who had killed so freely were afraid to die. Daix shouted: "Help!
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