Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 1.djvu/136

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MEMOIRS OF VIDOCQ.
111

"The tribunal having heard the commissioner of the executive power, and the citizen Despres, counsel for the prisoners, sentences François Vidocq and César Herbaux to the punishment of the galleys for eight years, conformably to the forty-fourth article of the second section of the second chapter of the second part of the penal code, which has been read, and which runs thus:—

"If the said crime of forgery is committed on a public and authentic paper, the punishment shall be eight years at the galleys.

"Ordered, conformably with the twenty-eighth article of the first chapter of the penal code, which has also been read, and runs thus:—

"'Whoever shall have been condemned to the punishment of irons, imprisonment in the house of correction, to the rack, to confinement, before undergoing the sentence shall be first led to the public square of the city, where the criminal jury have been summoned, and shall then be tied to a post, placed on a scaffold, and shall remain there exposed to the gaze of the populace for six hours, if he be condemned to irons or solitary confinement; for four hours if he be condemned to the rack; for two hours if he be condemned to imprisonment; over his head, on a board shall be inscribed in large characters, his name, profession, residence, cause of his sentence, and judgment passed on him.'

"And by the four hundred and forty-fifth article of the law of the third and fourth Brumaire, code of crimes and punishments, which has been read and runs thus:—'The exposure shall be made in one of the public places of the commune, where the criminal tribunal holds its sittings.'

"That the said François Vidocq and César Herbaux shall be exposed for six hours on a scaffold, which shall be for that purpose erected on the public square of this commune.

"Ordered, that with all speed of the commissaries