Alexandria Gazette

A Horrible Scene.-The movement in France to have all capital sentences executed in private is likely to receive a remarkable impetus from the horrible scene which occurred at Agen at the execution of the parricide Liprado.

When Deibler, Roch's successor, entered the condemned man's cell with his three aids, Liprado sprang into a corner and refused to sit his toilet made. "No: I want to go as I am," he said, and when the executioner said coaxingly, 'Come, come; we don't want to make you suffer," shouted, "But you do make me suffer, and unjustly, too-I never hurt anyone."

It took the four executioners nearly half an hour to get him down, so desperately did he defend himself with hands, feet and teeth-indeed, four keepers had to be summoned to their assistance. Then when they had tied his legs he refused to sit down on the stool, and breaking the cords with which he was bound began another fierce struggle, crying all the time: "You don't think it's painful-I wish you were in my place.." At last one of the keepers took the prostrate man by the hair and ears and pounded his head against the stone floor till he surrendered and promised to struggle no longer.

After feeling the steel of the scissors as the neck of his shirt was cut off, Leprade made no resistance, but remained in a horrible calm, muttering only from time to time, "This is painful-very painful!!" As is done with parricides, a white shirt was thrown upon his shoulders and a black veil knotted about his head, descending to his feet. When at the scaffold the veil was removed his face was seen to be all bruised and bleeding from the pounding he had received. After his head had been placed in the lunette he writhed round endeavoring to get a glimpse of the sun, but in a moment it was placed in position and the blade fell.

A similar case occurred in 1849, when a poacher at Nievre, who had assassinated a game keeper, was condemned to death. He resisted in prison first, and then on the scaffold, and finally assistance was sent for and the victim was literally forced under the guillotine. The crowd heard his groans and struggles until the fatal blade cut off his head. Charles and Francois Hugo, the son of the poet, related the terrible affair in the Evenement at the time and were condemned to imprisonment for insulting the law and the magistracy.