He was a bravo, a mercenary, nothing else. He had served in the ranks, and he mixed up his crime with some sort of military ideas. "Your conduct is very dreadful," M. Pasquier said to him; "To blow up perfect strangers, people who have done you no harm whatever,--passersby." Fieschi coldly replied, "It is what is done by soldiers in an ambush."

April 14, 1842

In the Boulevard du Temple the house of Fieschi is being pulled down. The rafters of the roof are destitute of tiles. The windows, without glass or frames, lay bare the interior of the rooms. Inside, through the windows at the corner of the yard, can be seen the staircase which Fieschi, Pepin, and Morey went up and down so many times with their hideous project in their hands. The yard is crowded with ladders and carpenter's work, and the ground-floor is surrounded by a timber boarding.

What can be seen of Fieschi's room appears to have been embellished and decorated by the different lodgers who have inhabited it since. The walls and ceilings are covered with a paper sprinkled with a small pattern of greenish hue; and upon the ceiling an ornamental beading, also papered, make the outline of a Y. The ceiling is, however, already broken in and much cracked by the builder's pickaxe.

Upon the subject of the Fieschi trial I have from the chancellor himself, M. Pasquier, several details which are not known.

As long as Fieschi, after his arrest, thought that his accomplices were in sympathy with him he remained silent. One day he learned through his mistress, Nini Lssave, the one-eyed woman, that Morey said, "What a pity the explosion did not kill him!" From that moment Fieschi was possessed with hatred; he denounced Pepin and Morey, and was as assiduous in ruining them as he had previously been anxious to save them. Morey and Pepin were arrested. Fieschi became the energetic supporter of the prosecution. He entered into the most minute details, revealed everything, threw light on, traced, explained, unveiled, unmasked everything, and failed in nothing, never telling any falsehood, and caring little about putting his head under the knife provided the two other heads fell.

One day he said to M. Pasquier, "Pepin is such a fool that he entered in his account-book the money he gave me for the machine, setting down what it was to be used for. Make a search at the house. Take his account-book for the first six months of 1835. You will find at the head of a page an entry of this kind made with his own hand." His instructions are followed, the search is ordered, the book is found. M. Pasquier examines the book, the procurator-general examines the book; nothing is discovered. This seems strange. For the first time Fieschi was at fault. He is told of it: "Look again." Useless research; trouble wasted. The commissioners of the court are reinforced by an old examining magistrate whom this affair makes a councillor at the Royal Court in Paris. (M. Gaschon, whom the Chancellor Pasquier, in telling me all this, called Gacon or Cachon). This judge, an expert, takes the book, opens it, and in two minutes finds at the top of a page, as stated, the memorandum which formed the subject of Fieschi's accusation. Pepin had been content to strike it through carelessly, but it remained perfectly legible. The president of the Court of Peers and the procurator-general, from a certain habit readily understood, had not read the passages which were struck through, and this memorandum had escaped them.

The thing being discovered, Fieschi is brough forward, and Pepin is brought forward, and they are confronted with each other before the book. Consternation of Pepin, joy of Fieschi. Pepin falters, grows confused, weeps, talks of his wife and his three children; Fieschi triumphs. The examination was decisive, and Pepin was lost. The sitting had been long; M. Pasquier dismisses Pepin, takes out his watch, and says to Fieschi, "Five o'clock! Come, this will do for today. It is time for you to go to dinner." Fieschi leaped up: "Dinner! O, I have dined today. I have cut off Pepin's head!"

Fieschi was correct in the smallest particulars. He said one day that at the moment of his arrest he had a dagger upon him. No mention was to be found of this dagger in any of the depositions. "Fieschi," said M. Pasquier, "what is the use of telling lies? You had no dagger!" "Ah, president," said Fieschi, "when I arrived at the station-house I took advantage of the moment when the policemen had their backs turned to throw the dagger under the camp-bed on which I had to sleep. It must be there still. Have a search made. Those gendarmes are a filthy lot. They do not sweep underneath their beds." A visit was made to the station-house, the camp-bed was removed, and the dagger was found.

I was at the Peer's Court the day before his condemnation. Morey was pale and motionless. Pepin pretended to be reading a newspaper. Fieschi gesticulated while talking loudly and laughing. At one moment he rose and said, "My lords, in a few days my head will be severed from my body; I shall be dead, and I shall rot in the earth. I have committed a crime, and I render a service. As for my crime, I am going to expiate it; as for my service, you will gather the fruits of it. After me no more riots, no more assassinations, no more disturbances. I shall have sought to kill the king; I shall have succeeded in saving him." These words, the gesture, the tone of voice, the hour, the spot, struck me. The man appeared to me courageous and resolute. I said to M. Pasquier, who answered me: "He did not think he was to die."