The Ravachol trial, which began in Paris on Tuesday, ended
at 3 o'clock on Wednesday morning—the Court having sat continuously, except for two short adjournments—in a verdict of " Not guilty " in the case of the prisoners Beala, Chan- martin, and the woman Soubere, and of " Guilty " in the case of Ravachol and the lad Simon, but "with extenuating cir- cumstances." This verdict prevented the Judge from giving the death-sentence which is imposed under the recent Act ; and accordingly Ravachol, in spite of the absolute certainty of his guilt, and the atrocious character of his crime, escaped with a sentence of penal servitude for life. It is still possible, how- ever, that he may undergo the penalty of death, for he is to be tried at Montbrison on the charge of murdering the " Hermit of Chambles," a crime which he has in effect acknow- ledged; and a Loire jury may prove less easily intimidated. We have dwelt on the cowardice of the jury elsewhere, and will only notice here the extraordinary mildness and gentle- ness displayed by the Judge throughout the trial, and the manner in which he allowed the prisoner to air his theories in Court. Indeed, so marked was the deference paid by the Judge to the criminal, that M. de Blowitz sarcastically speaks
of Ravachol as "presiding at the Assize Court," of his "not being too rough with M. Giles, who sat in the President's chair." Ravachol closed his address to the Court by the re- mark : " May my unintended victims understand my acts, and pardon them ! "—a piece of ridiculous cant when coming from a man who expressly declared that he added bits of broken glass and scraps of iron to his saucepan full of cartridges, in order to make the effect more deadly. Ravachol is an ordinary criminal of a rather debased order, who talks " Anarchism " in a sort of parrot-fashion, and in not even the most perverted sense is he a would-be saviour of his fellow- men.
Previous page
