Popular.com

Pobular.com. Paris, France, September 7, 1922.

As I stand behind the bars of my cold, dark cell in the prison of Saint-Lezar, in the heart of Mary, Paris, to which I have been condemned by the malignity of man and cruel circumstances, my thoughts turn back over my eventful and dramatic life.

I count the many years I have spent in helping my fellow men and women in works of charity,

in aiding the cause of religion and in cultivating the noblest aspirations of the human soul,

then I say to myself that men have forgotten all my good works in a moment when

the mere appearances of a terrible crime were brought against me and condemned me to a felon

cell. As I reflected on this incredible contrast, I expressed my thoughts in these verses which

I have sent to a friend from my prison.

And so my thoughts I send to you as from my living tool I write, where chains and bars are all my view. No outlook, air, no books, no light. For 50 years all that was right, I did to all and every year, marked a good work my chief delight.

Then suddenly I saw appear a plot, in which I was accused of a dark crime, though innocent,

my name in swiftest flight was sent, the world around I was refused.

A applause for my good works, yet heed.

A rumor bitter as the rule, cried to the winds a false misdeed,

and this cruel blow, unproved, untrue, will give me more celebrity than 50 years of charity.

...of charity. September 17th, 1922.

The guillotine recently emptied a cell in the Paris prison

when the black-whiskered head of Landreau, the wholesale wife murderer,

rolled into the basket of the executioner.

In the adjoining cell now sits a condemned prisoner quite as interesting as the late

Monsieur Landreux, Madame Georges Besrabo.

Monsieur Landreau specialized on killing wives.

...