From Our Own Correspondent, Paris, May 2.
Mevislas Charrier, the anarchist, who participated in' the hold-up of the Paris-Marseilles express last July (in which Lieut. Carabelli, a young officer, was shot dead by one of Charrier's two accomplices, Bertrand and Thomas, and several other passengers were robbed, Bertrand and Thomas being afterwards shot down by police outside aw Paris cafe), found the Seine Assize jurors in a stern mood. They gave an affirmative answer to all the questions put to them by tha presiding judge, and found no extenuating circumstances. Charrier was accordingly sentenced to death.
Outwa diy, the prisoner did not correspond at all to the popular idea of an anarchist. He was smartly dressed and wore grey gloves, causing the Advocate General, who conducted the case for the prosecution, to refer to him as a prison Beau Brummel and a Bolshevik dandy. Mentally, he was the type of the insurgent against society. He dwelt on his own disadvantages and argued that, as society had done nothing for him, ho was entitled to make war on it} He was full of bravado, apparently thinking that, because he did not fire a shot, he was less guilty than his accomplices and would escape the. extreme penalty. Heredity was the only excuse or explanation that his counsel could advance, He was the son of a literary man of the most Bohemian type, always shabby, ' generally hungry and never so happy as when he could hold forth in, a cafe to a circle of attentive listeners ready to keep his glass filled. He was the ornament of a restaurant in which the Knives and forks were chained to the table, in case the customers shawld pocket them. He was more than once turned out of his wretched lodging-house because the other occupants were kept awake at night by his coughing. By some strange chance he married a quiet and respectable schoolmistress—about the last person, one would have thought, who would be likely lo feel any attraction for such a man. He lived with her for year or two, gave way to his former habits and died of consumption in a hospital.
Mecislas was brought up by his mother, but the strongest instincts he inherited were those of his father, and, not content with preaching anarchy, he acted it. His own counsel, who discussed him with great frankness, said that he was not w much sympathy, but what could be expected from
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.