Pranzini's Career.

Henri Pranzini was so infamous a villain that twenty guillotines could not have givenhim his deserts. Paris was startled with. the nows of his crime. It was the last of a, long- series of private murders, and it could scarcely have shocked a public grown fastidious in horrors if it had not also been the worsfc. A woman of a rather nondescript class named Do Mod Wile, otherwise known as Marie Regnaulb, with her servant and a littlochikLslfepinginacradle by her bidside, wore all found most brutally murdered. Their throats had been cut, and, in the child's case, decapitation had nearly resulted irom the severity of the stroke. The place was ransacked ; the motive was evidently plunder. Marie Kegnault was known to be the possessor of costly jewels, and they were gone. To get at her jewels, the miudercr had evidently begun to kill her as &ho slept, and, to pi event all risk of detection, he had killed the servant ami the child. He had, in fact, destroyed a whole household. The day after the murder the hue and cry was raised throughout all France. The police at first threw their nets over Paris and the Eastern Departments, but they drew nothing. They had but a poor clue. The people of the house in the Ruo Montaigne where Marie Regnault lived were able to describe a man who had been seen on the staircase on the evening of the crime, but there, for the moment, all tiaico of him was lost. In a few days, however, news camo from Marseilles. A man who had passed the evening in one of the dens of infamy in that city had offered some costly jewellery for sale ior a trilling sum. The women who had bought it heard oi the murder through the newspapers, and communicated with the police. The chase was warm now, but still tho murderer was not caught. .Soon, however, the police had such information as warranted thorn in tapping on tho shoulder a gentlemanlike person who was attending a performance at the theatre. The gentlemanlike person was Pranzini. Tho women to whom he had offered the jewels recognised him at once ; cards bearing his name had been found in thii house of tho muidered woman ; his face and hands were scratched, as though he had taken part in a violent struggle ; he lied crudely, foolishly, in his answers to most of tho questions that were put to him. He was soon brought back to JAuis, and then gradually his full history came out, with a host of minute particulars that tended to fix the crime upon him.

Murder of Madame Skobelefflie was an Italian, if ho could bo said fco have a nationality, but an Italian of the Levant, and he wag born at Alexandiia in 1856. He had a fluent mastery of most of the languages spoken by those nomads of civilisation to "whom ho belonged. Ho had been e\ery thing by turns, and nothing 1 long : had boon dismissed from the Egyptian Post, Office for theft, had served as interpreter in the Russian army during the last war with Turkey, had helped the English army in the same way in the Soudan, and between the two adventures, for to him they were nothing more, had tried his fortunes so far afield a-j Afghanistan and Bunnah. The most mysterious passage of his life related to his brief period of service in the Russian army. He had been employed by Bkobelefl ; and at the mention of the Russian General's name it was remembered that the General's mother had been cruelly robbed and murdered in a lonely spot, hoon after he had recommended a courier to her service, to whom, at first, &he had conceived a violent aversion. The courier was never found ; but there was a horrible suspicion that if Skobeleff could have lived to confront Pranzini he might ha\e recognised the man who disappeaieci go mystenously after the crime. This secret, if it were one in Pranzini's keeping, has gone to the grave with him. As our telegram shows, ho affirmed his innocence of the crime of which he was proved guilty, and died con&istently lying to the last. Pie had earned, or at any rate acquired, large sums. He returned from Afghanistan with thirty thousand francs, and he leceived seven thousand for his services in the Soudan. Bub he was always in want of money, and when he came- to Paris in 1886, after his wanderings in evciy quarter of tho globe, he was glad to mako an acquaintance with a Madame Sabatier that promised to replenish hi? empty purse.

The "Bearded Lady." In this intrigue he returned to his true calling. He was by profession a beaugarcon, or fascinator of the lair. He was handsome and pleasing- ; lie had a silken moustache and while hands ; and he turned all these advantages to account in making a living in the most infamous way. Madame Sabatier becamo violently enamouredof him, and supplied him with funds until he had drained her of overy penny. When her resources were exhausted, he made the acquaintance of Marie Regnault. They met at a picture gallery — he was not indifferent to the arts, and he had a certain taste for music and singing. He made the acquaintance of Marie Regnault in February; in a month from that time, as we have seen, he was ready to put her to death. He had found out all about her in the meanwhile — her history, her habits, and her manner of storing her jewels. When ho was quite ready, he bought a large butcher's knife • and a false beard with almost the last; few francs ho had in his pocket, and he went straight to his work, lying quietly by his victim's side, until her deep breathing showed that he might venture to cut her throat. Ho had fascinated Madame Sabatier to such good purpose that he was very nearly saved by an alibi to which he had persuaded her to testify. The case turned largely on the question as to the way in which he had passed the night of the murder. Even at the very last, as our correspondent shows, M. Grevy pressed him for satisfactory evidence on this point. He said thafe he had pa&sed it at Madame Sabatier's house, and, at first, in the belief that she still retained his affection, she consented to bear him out. But when the wily "Juge d'lnstruction " showed her a letter in which Pranzini had described her to another of his female acquaintance as a " bearded lady," her anger, for the moment, got the better of her love, arid she told tho truth. From the timo of that fatal avowal, however, to the very eve of his execution, her life was one persistent ondeavour to return to the falsehood. Sho declared that Pranzini might havo to come to her apartment without waking her, and sho sought an interview with the President of the Republic to offer him his choice of a number of other ingenious inventions that might save her faithless lover's head. An examination of his papers showed that woman after woman had compromised herself for his sake. He was in correspondence with a lady of high social standing in America, and it is believed that his chief motive in committing the murder was to find the passage money for his journey to New York. When every impudent lie had failed him, the remembrance of his dupes still gave him a happy thought for the last of the series. To the President's pressing question as tohis wheroabouts on the night of the crime, ho had no better reply to make than that a chivalrous regard for a lady's honour compelled him to keep his mouth closed. This sealed his doom.