The trial of Luccheni, the assassin of the Empress of
Austria, took place on Thursday at Geneva. Though the prisoner entered the Court a reus confitens, and displayed the utmost callousness and effrontery throughout, the proceedings were conducted with a dignity and sobriety in noteworthy contrast to the trial of President Carnot's murderer. Very little was added to what was already known about the crime or the criminal, who, in answer to the usual inquiry, gave his name and condition as "Louis Luccheni, born in Paris on August 22nd, 1873, labourer, place of origin Parma." Although he at first strenuously denied that he had any accomplices, on being interrogated by the President he turned to the audience and "with the gesture of a conjurer exclaimed, 'My accomplice—he is there, he is gone.' " As for his motive, he declared it to be human suffering, and stated that he had been deserted at birth by his mother. The Public Prosecutor, at the close of his speech, said :—" Only a few weeks ago the grave closed for ever upon the prisoner's victim. May the tomb close as heavily to-night at Geneva on the footsteps of the murderer when he has crossed the threshold of our penal prison, and may he pass into ever- lasting oblivion Let this be his punishment." Luccheni was condemned to ri elusion en perpetuite, the utmost penalty allowed by Swiss law ; but, terrible as this sentence undoubtedly is, we cannot bring ourselves to believe that it will impress the imagination of the public or of the criminal himself so deeply as the summary infliction of capital punishment.
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