A STUDY OF LUIGI LUC CHEN I. 201 



orator was permitted to praise him as a political man without inter- 

 ruption from the delegate. 



One day, irritated because he had been denied some permission, 

 he abruptly took his leave, declaring that he was not born to be a 

 servant, and returned to Switzerland to work as a marble polisher. 

 But even from Switzerland he kept continually imploring his old 

 employer to take him back, declaring in a letter which revealed 

 symptoms of a persistent delirium that " he probably would not re- 

 ceive him again because he did not go to mass"; which indicates 

 substantially that he had not that repugnance for the anti-anarchical 

 life of a servant which he manifested previously and afterward.* 



Whether all at once or not he became an extreme anarchist. He 

 signed and composed anarchist hymns. Suspected by his comrades of 

 not being zealous enough, and also perhaps of being a spy, he decided 

 to strike a blow against some prince ; he chose the empress as his victim 

 possibly because he had suffered his first annoyance in Austria. He, 

 who had never killed a fly, had a rude instrument prepared — a file; 

 practiced for a considerable time, perhaps a month, at striking with 

 it, and having committed the crime, tried to escape. When stopped 

 by two citizens he did not resist, and behaved in a very different way 

 from common criminals, therein exhibiting a tinge of insanity. He, 

 for example, although he knew French very well, denied it and de- 

 manded an interpreter in the interrogations. He sang and laughed 

 continually, and was glad that he had dealt his victim a good blow, 

 and that he had struck deep with the instrument, boasting that he had 

 used a file instead of a dagger. He was, besides, solicitous of publicity, 

 declaring to the reporters and the judges that he had done the deed 

 all alone, that he had left his captain to accomplish his idea, that he 

 had been an anarchist for thirteen years, etc. In two ungrammatical 

 and very long letters to the journal Bon Marzio, in N'aples, chosen 

 evidently because he had seen it at his master's, he declared that he 

 was not a criminal born, as Lombroso would have it, nor a madman, 

 and that he had not been incited by misery but by conviction, be- 

 cause, if all would do as he had done, middle-class society would soon 

 disappear. He knew that this single assassination would be of no 

 avail, but he had, nevertheless, committed it for an example. 



He wrote to the President of the Swiss Confederation that he 

 would rather be tried at Lucerne, because the death penalty was in 

 force there, and repeated the statement to the judges; he wrote to 

 his master that he was more worthy of him than ever; he replied to 

 the reporters and the judges who reproached him with having killed 



* It appears that he afterward made the strange request for an anarchist to be appointed 

 guard of the prison, and was irritated when it was denied. (See A. Gautier, Le proces 

 Luccheni. Vienna, 1899.) 

 VOL. LV. — 16 



