said, ' I have no money, but I have a cousin who is a bookbinder who perhaps will lend me some.' I said to him, ' You wish to put me off again as you have done before.' I snatched the bills from his hand, and threat ened to tell his wife and the manager of the bank. Then seizing my razor, he exclaimed, 4 If you do, I will kill myself.' I moved away toward my bed. He uttered a cry. I turned and saw that he had cut his throat. I endeavored to take the razor from him, but he held it so firmly that I broke the handle." Monthly then stated that after this fright ful occurrence he lost his senses and knew not what he did when he found that Boisselier had killed himself. He then took pos session of the dead man's bills of exchange, and purchased a knife, — not to commit a murder, for Boisselier was already dead, but to cut up the body, so that it might be packed in the trunk. He persisted that the cutler was mistaken. The carving-knife had not been purchased between eight and nine in the morning, but at noon; not before, but after the death of Boisselier. This statement the advocate for the ac cused insisted was reasonable and credible enough; but the medical testimony intro duced to controvert it tended strongly to show that this theory was, to say the least, highly improbable. Many witnesses also testified as to the character of Boisselier, his happy home life and his sunny disposi tion. He was not a man, they said, who would commit suicide simply because he feared that he might lose his position. Monthly was eloquently defended by M. Johannet, who laid great stress upon Month ly's good character as a soldier. He had always conducted himself with great gal lantry, and at the risk of his own life he had once courageously avenged the death of a
comrade. He was a man of an affectionate nature. He was fondly loved by his second wife; he was tenderly regarded and highly esteemed by the relations of his first wife. Letters abounding in the kindest expres sions, addressed to him in prison by various members of his family, were openly read in court in order to demonstrate his amiability and gentleness of character. But eloquence and pleading were of no avail. After a deliberation of three hours the jury returned a verdict of guilty without extenuating circumstances. Monthly was condemned to death, and the court ordered that the execution should take place on one of the public squares of Orleans. Monthly listened to the sentence in a state of evident prostration. " I am inno cent, " he said feebly; " I have told the truth. I shall welcome death gladly!" An appeal to the Court of Cassation was rejected, and Monthly was executed at Orleans, on the 8th of April, 1843, in the presence of an enormous crowd. His cour age had completely given way, and he was in a most abject condition of body and mind when he appeared upon the scaffold. He made no confession of his guilt, but constantly protested his innocence. The murder of Boisselier had greatly ex cited not merely Orleans, but the whole of France. " It was," as Southey said of a great crime committed many years since in London, "one of those few domestic events which, by the depth and the expansion of hor ror attending them, had risen to the dignity of a national interest." As a means of attract ing visitors to a cafe" at Limoges, the mur derer's widow was drawn from her miserable seclusion and induced to exhibit herself pub licly, presiding at a counter and dispensing drinks to the morbidly curious who came to gape and stare at her.
