The County Gentleman.—“Mr. Turner is evidently an exceedingly close observer of men and matters, and in addition he has a considerable power of analysis of emotions and impulses of the springs which move to action and the restraining forces which control men’s natural desires and ambitions.... ‘The Comedy of Progress’ is throughout wittily and well written, and ought to interest those who like a serious subject carefully treated, and with more than an occasional passage of pure fun and humour.”
The Comedy of Progress
Crown 8vo., cloth gilt, SIX SHILLINGS.
The Lyons Mail
The true story of the murders, told by a descendant of the murdered courier.
Translated from the French by
ROBERT H. SHERARD.
Generations of people have wept over the sufferings of Joseph Lesurques, who was guillotined for the murders of the Lyons Mail affair. It was supposed that he was an innocent man, the victim of a fatal resemblance to a scoundrel named Dubosc. His case has been used by hundreds of barristers to bolster up a defence based on the theory of mistaken identity. This book demolishes the theory of his innocence. It is written by a descendant of one of the victims, who proves that Lesurques was guilty, that his sufferings were no more than he merited, and that if he went to the guillotine dressed in white, the garb of innocence, this was only a final piece of duplicity on his part. A true story of the “good old times” in France after the Revolution, with dramatic pictures of the unequal struggle between the police and the army of scoundrels. In illustration of the state of things in the Year IV. (1796) an account is given of the doings of a certain Bondroux, who was the Dick Turpin of the Lyons highroad.
Few chapters in fiction are more striking than the true account of the arrest of Joseph Lesurques at the Assize Court in Paris, during the trial of his accomplices; a fresh illustration of the resistless force or fascination of danger which draws criminals on by the most imprudent acts to their destruction.
It exposes in its true light the character of the famous Conventionnel, Merlin de Douai, who inspired Victor Hugo with one of his noblest creations, and suggests the reflection that if one knew the truth many names which have come down to posterity with immaculate reputations would stand in a different place in the public esteem.