He wrote to the President of the Swiss Confederation that he would rather be tried at Lucerne, because the death penalty was in force there, and repeated the statement to the judges; he wrote to his master that he was more worthy of him than ever; he replied to the reporters and the judges who reproached him with having killed a helpless woman, that as for that, if she had been a child, but a prince, he would have killed her all the same. At another time he said, in a wild way: "I killed her because she did not work; whoever does not work should not eat, and I was not going to work for her"—a reason which would be as good for the slaughter of several million persons.
Curious and important is the remark of Luccheni that "Crispi would not have killed her because he was a thief"; an evident proof of the complete lack of moral sense in anarchists,[P] who like primitive men confound the crime with the deed, and regard criminality as a sort of merit, a seal of fraternity; which demonstrates that the anarchistic practice, if not its theory, is an equivalence of crimes.
When asked if he had never committed blood-crimes, he replied that he had never had anything to do with courts, not even as a witness—which was found to be true—but "I entertained the idea this time, and acted upon it."
Luccheni is a man of medium stature, about 1.63 metre, with very thick, light chestnut hair, stout, with dark-gray, half-closed eyes, roundish ears, heavy eyebrows, voluminous cheek bones and jaw prognatic, low forehead, very brachycephalic (cephalic index 88). He has, therefore, a number of characteristics of degeneration common to epileptics and insane criminals. On the other hand, his handwriting, with its minute characters, especially in the writing of past years, indicates a mild feminine disposition, with little energy of character. This is especially seen in an autograph of 1896, which was procured for me by Dr. Guerini, who got it from his patient (see Fig. 2). This characteristic, which was extremely conspicuous in Caserio when he was near his crime, was also apparent in the assailant of General Rocha. I have likewise observed it to be very conspicuous in epileptics and hysterical persons; and it corresponds, according as they are in their psychical spasm or out of it, with a real double personality provoked by their disease. In one, as I have shown in L'Uomo Delinquente, they write signatures that cover a whole page in their larger diameter, while the signature in the normal state is often smaller than the average (see Fig. 3).
Fig. 3.—Macrographic and Micrographic Writing by the same Epileptic.
The same double personality that is apparent in the writing is attested in the psychology. We have seen that Luccheni was kind to children, that he was a good servant, characteristics quite opposed to the anarchistic nature, and a genial companion; a man who in Africa was enthusiastically fond of military life; who, a little while before, when he was in the service of the captain, had expressed extreme monarchical sentiments; and finally, when he had become an anarchist, again asked his master to be restored to his service. This double personality is another of the essential characteristics of hysteria and epilepsy.
I have recently studied an epileptoid degenerate who has a sound mind, and, at least in his normal state, is quiet and gentle. But as soon as he has taken hardly more than ninety grammes of alcohol (96° proof) he becomes a wild anarchist, with fierce impulses and hallucinations, of which he has no recollection two hours afterward, or even charges them to his comrades. In this case a double personality is revealed, the demonstration of which is completed by alterations of the visual field and of the touch.
We have, then, in Luccheni a degenerate and probably epileptic person descended from an alcoholic father. Although he affirms that he is not insane or a criminal born, he is a little of both, for he is epileptic and hysterical, so that his denial is already a beginning of a proof of disease. Luccheni also confirms what I have tried to demonstrate in my Delitto politico—that the most frequent organic cause of similar morbid impulses of a political character is hystero-epilepsy; for not only do the declarations of some of his countrymen point to epilepsy, and the characteristics of degeneration in the skull confirm it, but his inheritance from an alcoholic father and that impulsiveness and that double personality, which make him pass from the gentlest of men to the cruelest, and which is reflected in the macrography alternating with the micrography of the intervals between the spasms, are accumulative evidence of it.
I have demonstrated the hysterical and epileptic basis in the anarchists and regicides Felicot, Monges, and Caserio, and particularly in a vagabond anarchist, full of cranial anomalies, who told me, when I questioned him concerning political reforms, "Do not speak to me of them, for as soon as I begin to think about them I am taken with a vertigo and fall down"; so that it seems to me possible to establish a psycho-epileptic equivalent in extreme political innovators, an equivalent which is further manifest in their vanity, rising sometimes to megalomania, in their intermittent geniality, and especially in their great impulsiveness. There was also latent in Luccheni an indirect disposition to suicide, which I have found in other political criminals, like Oliva, Nobiling, and Passananti,[Q] who, having conceived a dislike for the king, made an attempt on his life; and especially in Henry, who rejected the defense of his advocate and his mother based on the insanity of his father, remarking that it was the advocate's business to defend, his to die; and in that Roumanian who was photographed in a portrait that I have reproduced, in the act of committing suicide.[R] Luccheni, too, believed he would be condemned to death, and was much disappointed when he learned that there was no such penalty in the canton where he committed the crime.