Illustrated Article. THE DEATH OF MANDRIN. PARTLY FROM THE NARRATIVE OF AN EYE WITNESS. For the Olio. ON the 26th of May, 1755, an immense multitude was assembled in the street de la Perolerie, leading up to the great gate of the Minster of Valence, in Dauphine, waiting with intense anxiety, the arrival of this great culprit. Such had been the enormity of his crimes, and the terror everywhere attached to his name, that people expected to be hold some monster, whose very look would be sufficient to freeze the spectators with horror; and while they occupied the interval with recounting his desperate exploits, and enumerating the victims of his cruelties, they eagerly looked forward to the hour when he was to expiate his offences with ignominy and torment. But when, about one o'clock, the procession of municipal authorities, escorted by troops of soldiers, was seen moving from the direction of the prison, and every 13-VOL. IV. Q eye turned upon the sentenced object of all this apparatus, surprise, and at length sympathy, superseded every other feeling. There must ever be something in the appearance of a fellow-creature, bound and given up unresistingly to inevitable death, that will appeal to the strongest, if not the kindest impulses of the human heart. It is in vain that we place before our minds the black list of enormities by which the culprit has merited his approaching punishment: we see before us a mortal endued with the same flesh and blood as ourselves, about to be thrust out from life-a passive victim; and, in spite of our sterner judgments, pity for the criminal, weakens, if it does not obliterate, the abhorrence of his crime. The man who was now to act the last scene of his tragical life, was calculated every way to excite this temporary predominance of feeling over justice. I had been admitted to him in the prison; and was with him, indeed, at the period when the officers came to demand their prey. Mandrin immediately turned to his confessor, who, in a short time, had 97 obtained wonderful ascendancy over him, and requested the father to accompany him and see him die. At first the worthy Gasperini declined it, alleging his want of courage to witness the horrors of his penitent's punishment, and particularly, his fear of being incapacitated from administering spiritual comfort during his agonies, by the expressions of pain which Mandrin's sufferings would naturally wring from him. The courageous smuggler, however, earnestly solicited this favour, and promised not to shed a tear-a pledge he most gallantly redeemed. At the time I left him, they were undressing him; the tenor of his sentence directing him to be brought out in his shirt. I had scarcely found myself in the area of the cathedral, when his figure was first caught by the spectators, as he advanced to the porch, to make the amende honor able. The following is a faithful portrait of him as he then appeared. His personal beauty could scarcely escape notice; when I say beauty, I would not imply that he had either the features of a Belvidere, or the symmetry of an Antinous-it was manly beauty, in somewhat of a rude mould. He was about the middle size, but of very athletic proportions; his hair was a bright and golden chesnut; his eyes large and blue; his complexion ruddy, and his countenance lively; he was in his shirt, which, falling open at the collar, exposed his neck and chest, and covering the rest of his body to the knees, disclosed a leg, whose contour excited many exclamations, "Voila la jolie jambe ! quil y a des grasses nerveux!" A halter hung round his neck, with a label fastened to it, having in large characters: 66 THE CHIEF OF SMUGGLERS, ASSASSINS AND DISTURBERS OF PUBLIC TRANQUILLITY!'' His hand held a lighted wax candle, of two pounds weight; and, amidst all this pomp of ignominy, he knelt on the summit of the broad steps of the great west porch, and with unblenched cheek, unshaken hand, and unfaltering voice, implored of God, the King and the Legislature pardon for his crimes. This finished, he moved on to the Place des Clercs, escorted as before, and followed by the crowd, his bare feet pacing the flinty pavement as firmly as if he had been treading in some festal hall, on carpets of tapestry or velvet. Arrived within a few steps of the scaffold, he paused with the greatest coolness to examine its construction; and then ascended the deadly stage with an intrepedity that awakened the greater interest, from its being evidently the result of resignation. People could scarcely credit the evidence of their eyes. Was this man (so young, apparently not thirty, and whose countenance expressed any thing but ferocity) the infamous miscreant with whom murder had swelled into massacre, and to whom cruelty was pastime ? Was this the man who filled France, Savoy, Switzerland, nay, Europe, with the terror of his atrocities? The public enemy-for whose capture nations conspired, and royal embassies were set on foot? Was this the man who, in his Savoyard castle, when besieged by a hundred and fifty men, and the fortress gates burst open, fought with desperate courage from chamber to chamber, and from story to story, till driven to the very turret-tops? It seemed impossible! and the hatred of the spectators was converted into feelings of something like admiration. Yet he was still Mandrin,-the bloody, the remorseless Mandrin; and that right hand, which was now quietly but firmly employed in throwing aside his last garment, had scarcely yet lost the tinge of blood. He seemed to listen with great respect to the jesuit who acted as his confessor, and after a short conversation with him, in which the holy man laid his hand impressively on the culprit's shoulder, he gave a nod of acquiescence, and approaching the edge of the scaffold, exhorted the spectators, particularly the younger part, to take warning by his crimes and their deserved punishment. He then returned to the monk, who seemed to watch him with intense interest, knelt to him, received his last benediction, and in another moment the executioner was at his side. This man, from whose hands he was to receive his piecemeal death, had been a lieutenant in his band, and had accepted a pardon on the condition of his inflicting on his brave captain, the horrid tortures from which he himself shrunk. At this crisis, however, even this wretched slave could not avoid being touched with pity and compunction. Mandrin had unloosed the buttons of his shirt sleeves, and the executioner, having taken the halter and label from his neck, with a trembling hand, grasped the unfortunate criminal's shirt by the collar, and pulling it down over his shoulders, rolled it round his loins. Ten thousand eyes were now rivetted on the scaffold, and the silence was so breathless, that you heard the rustle of the linen, as it was finally adjusted for the more effectual infliction of the punishment. The scene was awful and impressive. It was a brilliant day; the meridian sun sparkled through the old lime trees in the square, painted the figured gables with rich breadths of sable and amber, and dallied with their gryphon weathercocks, till they became beacons of golden flame; an ocean of upturned heads, a living tapestry of myriad of dies, surrounded the scaffold; while the sable drapery and square cap of the Jesuit, the sombre habits of the other religious who accompanied him on the deadly stage, the haggard-looking executioner, and the noble naked form of the athletic criminal, who was patiently submitting to the necessary preliminaries of his disgraceful punishment, composed a picture worthy of Spagnoletti himself. Mandrin had only vouchsafed one look at the unhappy renegade, who was to inflict his torments, but that look was sufficient. Had you seen the gallant bearing of the naked smuggler, and then glanced at the agitated shame-stricken recreant by his side, you would have thought that Lewis Mandrin was about to annihilate the poor slave, and had stript only to give his glowing arm the stronger sway. And now the executioner, having evinced the greatest trepidation and confusion, was assisted by Mandrin himself, who, with his own hands, tightened his shirt about his middle, securing it with a knot. Murmurs of "Quelle Dommage ! C'est un bel Enfant !" rose around, and the wretched executioner, more to be pitied than his victim, fairly burst into tears. Mandrin alone was more composed than any of the spectators. "It is not for me," he said, casting an eye of pity on the poor wretch by whose hands he was to suffer, "it is not for me, but for my crimes that you should weep!" he paused, and then with a sudden burst of generous feeling, embraced him, adding, "Do your duty well, my friend, and dispatch me out of my pain as soon as you possibly can." Mandrin now sat down on the wheel; I was close by him, and though ready to faint with conflicting feelings, I witnessed every particular of the cruel work that ensued; and as the impression was vivid and ineffaceable, I will describe the whole faithfully and minutely. A covering for his face was brought him, but he declined it as unnecessary; the leathern thongs that were intended to bind him, were then produced. At this moment, his colour often went and came, and with a faint smile and rather hurried accents, he said, "I am in need of all my strength; pray give me some cordial to drink." He had indulged in both drinking and smoking when in prison, was extremely fond of good living, and extremely sen'sual; his self-indulgence contributed mainly to his ruin, his favourite mistress having betrayed to the King's troops her generous but lawless lover. A cordial was brought to him, part of it he drank, and part was rubbed upon his face; he was then stretched upon his back, and bound fast down. The instrument on which he was extended, resembled a St. Andrew's cross, and was so managed that his body and limbs afforded a fair aim to the strokes of the iron rod-which was to "break them in pieces like a potter's vessel." The cruel instrument then descended on his legs, dashing out splinters of bone and marrow. The unhappy criminal bore his pains with surprising fortitude, giving no other token of his intolerable agonies than that writhing of his body and quivering of his fleshy parts, which might be said to be involuntary. When his thighs were broken, such was their brawn and muscle, that they only presented to the eye a livid contusion, not even the skin being greatly lacerated. The ninth blow was inflicted upon his belly, just below his navel, and blood streamed after the stroke. The executioner's work was now ended, and with a look in which were blended morose rage and bitter remorse, he hastened from the scaffold. Mandrin was alive, and in full possession of his senses, but his countenance was writhen and discoloured with pain, and his bright hair swayed by the May wind, half covered it. In this state heard him say, "The first stroke was the worst, under all that followed, I seem only to feel the pain of the first." He was mercifully strangled immediately after this. Thus expired Lewis Mandrin, a man who, had he headed an army, would have been a hero, and who, darkly stained as he was with crimes resulting from his lawless occupation, and sullied with the excess of sensual indulgence, had still many high and generous qualities, often dismissing his enemies when in his power, and uniformly evincing forbearance and kindness to the poor and helpless. July 28th, 1829. HORACE GUILFORD. The executioner now grasped his dread- ON THE DEATH OF A MINSTREL. By THOMAS CAMBRIA JONES, Author of "The The past rush'd o'er his troubled brain, "When shall I feel as others feel, Myself thus marr'd exceedingly! "Men speak of torment after death- "Earth-Earth! take to thyself this dust!→→ SHOULD your lot, reader, be like mine ever to travel into the Lincolnshire Wapentakes, or to visit once the greatest city in Britain; on which may be seen from the elevation of its beautifully antique cathedral, the picturesque attractions of several counties, over which his satanic majesty looked with envy, and the sound of Old Tom' upbraided him for his ambition with his iron-ic tongue, enough to crack the drums of the ear, and make the listener deaf ever after; you will be struck with admiration and smitten with surprise, when you hear the peculiar but emphatic euphony of a pure native drawl out the question, 'D'ye call this, nau-thing?' which imparts more of the nature and feeling of admiration than implicit interrogation. Ladies of the first taste and wealth are to be found in Lincoln. My friend imagining, that as I was a bachelor, proceeded to introduce me to their smiles, and I was no less proud to be signalised by their favours; for the ladies of this county, though their names are not printed alphabetically in the Magazine as they were formerly, are not the less solicitous to become agreeable partners in society, to be kind wives and affectionate mothers. After I had spent one of the most delightful and intellectual evenings of my history in a party formed purposely for my reception, consisting of book-readers, conversational confabers, musical performers, and lovers of the best rational food, both for the body and the mind, the lateness of the hour prompted me to depart with my friend to our quarters; and our landlady, with a drowsy stupor on her eyes, as we arrived in her domain, complained of the presence of midnight, when we offered an apology for our lateness by the winsome pleasurse of the company we had visited; but she shook her head, and exclaimed, My good gentlemen, I have to rise ere daylight, d'ye call that, nau thing?' We promised more regularity, and I still talked of the having lost my heart in the labyrinths of a wealthy banker's daughter, whose hand I was permitted to lead through a quadrille, and whose sweet words were like the drops from the honeycomb to me; upon which the 'gude man o' the house,' who had been leaning over the ashes of the fire meant to be kept alive till the coming morning, lifted up his head and parting his grey hairs from over his forehead, and looking most wistfully at me and then his wife, said, The banker's daughter, yeh? d'ye call that, nau-thing?" We shook hands on the shrewdness of his remark," and taking a candle, I sought the rest, which, in such comfortable circumstances, was almost certain to be insured. But love had worked his intrigues in my thoughts, and they were so interwoven with reverie and schemes, that sleep would not draw down my eyelids, and put my senses in forgetfulness; for the old man's apostrophe disturbed me about the object of my heart, which, reader, D'ye call this, nau-thing?' I had redeemed my purpose in the morning when I arose, but the noise under the window completely cancelled it. An angry postboy, irritated on his way to Gretna by the stupidity, or delayance of the ostler in affording refreshment to his tired and reeking horses, with the anxieties in addition of the frightened pair of fugitive lovers, and the fear of the guardian in the distance closely in pursuit, lifted the butt-end of his whip, and so belaboured him, that the ostler brought out his cart whip and gave his antagonist no light portion of his strength I drew back the window, and looking down, cried enough!' for the lady inside the chaise was fainting, and the wait'ress and the lover, applying their cordials with the old landlady also in request, and several other aidents, to set the travellers right and speedily on their way to the supposed happyanvil-making' felicity. The barber who came up, as it were, at the critical moment, threw down his kit,' and joining in a most facetious piece of humour, took the ostler's whip, imitating the post driver as he drove away, and cried out lustily, repeating the strokes every sentence, D'ye call that, nauthing?' The ostler could scarcely refrain being angry, but as he had received something even more substantial than blows and sarcasm, he grinned at the |