Causes Célèbres. innocent, you know it; my hands have never been steeped in the blood of my fellowman. I am the victim of a conspiracy which has been formed against us, and that wretched woman who testified falsely wished to save the guilty ones. I have no remorse; my conscience does not re proach me. I have committed many sins, but I have never been guilty of a crime. Oh, no, my father! no, a thousand times no! You alone be lieve in me, you alone know that your son is worthy of your name! Ah! I am content, now that you are free. I rejoice that you are with my mother to console her. . . . We must put our trust in God. Remorse will pursue the guilty ones everywhere; they will finally be obliged to denounce themselves. I shall bear with courage this cross which God has placed upon me." Lesnier appealed from his sentence. His defender hoped and endeavored to inspire hope in his client; but the appeal was re jected, and on the 26th of January, 1849, Lesnier was taken to the galleys at Rochefort. There, by his modest demeanor and his uncomplaining, patient ways, he soon won the esteem of the officers, who allowed him every possible privilege. There was at Rochefort, as at all the other galleys, a secret society, whose decrees some times stained with blood this hell of expiation. In an obscure corner, far from the eyes of the guards, the prisoners held their sinister meetings, in which, parodying the sacred forms of justice, the most hardened of the convicts in their turn judged the condemned. All the new-comers had to appear before this strange tribunal. Lesnier was obliged to submit to this secret jurisdiction; he had to explain his presence in the galleys, and relate his story. A strange thing happened to him, — one that rarely occurred in this mock court. These veterans in crime believed in his protestations of innocence; they revised the trial of Lesnier in their own manner, and proclaimed him innocent. Is there in extreme perversity, as in the most absolute purity, a clear and infallible discernment of virtue? While Lesnier's rehabilitation commenced
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in the galleys, his father did not for an in stant relax his exertions. He was constantly on the move, from Fieu to Libourne, from Li bourne to Bordeaux. In 1852 Lesnier was removed from Rochefort to Brest, the galleys at the former place having been abandoned. In 1854, wishing to terminate his life as a galley slave and to put an end to the useless endeavors of his father, he requested to be sent with the first shipment of convicts to Cayenne. His re quest was granted, and his departure fixed for the 5th of July. The father was thinking of quitting France himself, and joining in America the son whom he could not save, when suddenly a ray of hope gladdened his heart. A new Procureur Imperial had been ap pointed at Libourne, a magistrate who was free from all local influences. He was a young man, warm-hearted and possessed of great intelligence. His name was Charandeau. The father brought him all the notes of the former trial that he had been able to acquire; and Gergeres, who had defended the son, also went to him to express his firm con viction of the innocence of the young man. It was a serious thing for a magistrate to throw doubt upon a judgment already rendered by making a new investigation. It was easy, however, to see, upon a careful review of the evidence that the pretended attack on Daignaud was a mere invention; the denuncia tions of the woman Cessac also appeared, to say the least, suspicious; but if Lesnier were not really guilty, how would it be possible to lay their hands upon the true murderer? If by misdirected zeal they failed in this affair, it would be very compromising for the young magistrate. His whole future depended upon the result of this stroke of audacity. He did not shrink, however, from what he believed to be his duty. It was with the greatest care and most consummate prudence that M. Charandeau began his investigations. It would not do to frighten the guilty ones, nor to awaken the suspicions of those interested in maintain
