GRAND AVENUE, LUXEMBURG GARDENS.
Asked if he had anything to say why sentence should not be passed, he spoke as follows:—
“If I have this day to blush for a national crime which I alone have committed, I have the consolation of believing in my last moments that I have not dishonoured the nation. I have not dishonoured my family. You must see in me nothing but a Frenchman resolved to sacrifice himself in order to destroy, according to his mind, the greatest enemies of his country. You accuse me of being guilty of having attacked the life of a prince. Yes, I am guilty of that crime; but some of the men who compose the Government are in their present position because they also have mistaken crimes for virtues.”
SCULPTURE GALLERY, LUXEMBURG PALACE.
There was not and could not be any substantial defence to the charge of assassination; and after a long trial, in which every conceivable question, connected or unconnected with the case, was put to the prisoner, and after an imprisonment of some four months, he was at last condemned to death. He bore the announcement of the sentence with equanimity, and on the morning of the execution seemed only anxious to know whether the crowd assembled to witness his death would be enough to give national importance to the incident.