They were still on the same spot, but there was a change in their positions.  The prisoner was now kneeling with clasped hands before the cut-throats, begging for his life for the sake of his wife and children, in heartrending accents, to which his executioners replied in mocking tones, “We have got you at last into our hands, have we?  You dog of a Bonapartist, why do you not call on your emperor to come and help you out of this scrape?” The unfortunate man’s entreaties became more pitiful and their mocking replies more pitiless.  They levelled their muskets at him several times, and then lowered them, saying; “Devil take it, we won’t shoot yet; let us give him time to see death coming,” till at last the poor wretch, seeing there was no hope of mercy, begged to be put out of his misery.

Drops of sweat stood on my forehead.  I felt my pockets to see if I had nothing on me which I could use as a weapon, but I had not even a knife.  I looked at my dog; he was lying flat at the foot of the tree, and appeared to be a prey to the most abject terror.  The prisoner continued his supplications, and the assassins their threats and mockery.  I climbed quietly down out of the fig tree, intending to fetch my pistols.  My dog followed me with his eyes, which seemed to be the only living things about him.  Just as my foot touched the ground a double report rang out, and my dog gave a plaintive and prolonged howl.  Feeling that all was over, and that no weapons could be of any use, I climbed up again into my perch and looked out.  The poor wretch was lying face downwards writhing in his blood; the assassins were reloading their muskets as they walked away.

Being anxious to see if it was too late to help the man whom I had not been able to save, I went out into the street and bent over him.  He was bloody, disfigured, dying, but was yet alive, uttering dismal groans.  I tried to lift him up, but soon saw that the wounds which he had received from bullets fired at close range were both mortal, one being in the head, and the other in the loins.  Just then a patrol, of the National Guard turned round the corner of the street.  This, instead of being a relief, awoke me to a sense of my danger, and feeling I could do nothing for the wounded man, for the death rattle had already begun, I entered my house, half shut the door, and listened.

“Qui vive?” asked the corporal.

“Idiot!” said someone else, “to ask ‘Qui vive?’ of a dead man!”

“He is not dead,” said a third voice; “listen to him singing”; and indeed the poor fellow in his agony was giving utterance to dreadful groans.

“Someone has tickled him well,” said a fourth, “but what does it matter?  We had better finish the job.”

Five or six musket shots followed, and the groans ceased.

The name of the man who had just expired was Louis Lichaire; it was not against him, but against his nephew, that the assassins had had a grudge, but finding the nephew out when they burst into the house, and a victim being indispensable, they had torn the uncle from the arms of his wife, and, dragging him towards the citadel, had killed him as I have just related.