A TERRIBLE ORDEAL

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 365, 16 April 1910, Page 9

A TERRIBLE ORDEAL

An officer in the French army, during the reign of Napoleon, having incurred the suspicion or resentment of the Emperor, thought it expedient to abandon his country and take refuge in one oi the Austrian provinces, and here he became advised of and initiated into a society, the object of whose formation was to hurl to the ground the Colossus whose arm smote and governed the whole continent of Europe with a sceptre of iron.

One day a letter was brought to him containing the usual signs and passwords of the society ; and requiring him to repair, on the following night, to a secluded spot in a forest, where ne would meet some of his associates.

He ! went, but lie found nobody. The orders were repeated four times. The officei sought the appointed place witli no better success than the first. On the fifth night of his appearance at the rendezvous, after waiting some time, he was on the point of returning, when loud cries suddenly arrested his attention.

Drawing his sword, he hastened to the spot whence thej seemed to proceed, and was fired upon by three men, who, seeing that he remained unwounded, in-: stantly took to flight, but at his feet lav a bleeding corpse, in which, by the feeble light of the moon, he in vain sought for tokens of returning animation. He was yet bending over the dead man, when a detachment of chasseurs, summoned apparently by the noise of the pistol that had been discharged at himself came up suddenly and arrested him as the assassin.

He was loaded with chains, tried the next day, and condemned to die for his supposed crime. His execution was ordered to take place at midnight. Surrounded by the ministers of justice, lie was led at a slow pace, by the light of torches, and the funeral tolling of bells, to a vast square, in the centre of which was a scaffold environed by horsemen, Beyond these was a numerous group of spectators who muttered impatiently, and at intervals sent forth a cry of abhorrence.

The victim mounted the scaffold, and his sentence was read, and the first act of the tragedy was on the point of fulfilment, when an officer let fall a word of hope. An edict had just been promulgated by the Government offering a pardon and life to any condemned criminal who should disclose the members and secret tokens of a particular association, the existence of which the Frenchman to whom these words were addressed had lately become aware of, and of which he had become a member.

He was questioned, but he denied all knowledge. They urged him to confess, with promises of additional reward. His only reply was a demand for immediate death—and hi? initiation was completed. All that had parsed was a terrible trial of fidelity. Those who surrounded him were members nf the society, and every incident that has been described, from the summons to the last moment of expected death, was only a step ill the progress of the fearful ordeal by which the society sought to determine the trustworthiness of that neophyte.